the erin cronicals

I'm Still Here

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Tue, 10 May 2022 16:23:00 +0000

I’m grateful to still be here.

So grateful.

Right now I’m writing from a cushy chair in the lounge of my hotel in Savannah, GA. There is a musician with a gorgeous voice performing singer/songwriter material that is melting my soul. I have a mimosa in front of me, and it all feels blissful.

Life, itself, is anything but blissful. It’s really hard. And it’s been so hard that I’ve neglected to do updates for almost a year. So I’m going to have to divide this update into parts: I’m Still Here (today’s medical update), My Wedding, Performing WIT, and installment #4 of Dear Mom.

As I had mentioned in my last post, in July 2021 I had to switch to a new chemo after they found a growth in my liver. And as predicted, 3 weeks before my wedding that new chemo caused me to lose all my hair. Luckily I got a really great wig thanks to 5 Under 40 - an organization that supports breast cancer patients who were diagnosed younger than 40.

Photo by Shirin Tinati

This treatment did not work well for me. Despite seeing some reduction in tumors in my lungs and bones and stability in my brain, the tumors kept growing in my liver. They decided to keep me on the treatment for a little longer than normal to see if things would turn around, but alas all that happened was the liver tumors got larger and became more numerous. So, in mid-March they switched me to Doxil, also known as “The Red Devil” because of its toxicity and its bright red color.

"The Red Devil"

My hair *is* growing back on this drug (I have some eyebrows again!) But good news always seems coupled with bad news: my brain tumors have not been decreasing and have been causing me to have seizures. So now I have to have a special kind of radiation called proton therapy - which will radiate my whole brain and spine - and make me lose whatever hair I have grown back.

My first seizure was December 1, and I had no idea I even had one - because I was unconscious for all of it. It was what is known as a tonic-clonic seizure (once called a Grand Mal.) One moment I was saying, “I don’t feel so well,” and the next thing I knew there were paramedics in our apartment demanding that I leave with them in an ambulance. I told them I didn’t have a seizure - I didn’t remember having one! (Not only was I unconscious, but seizures can cause severe confusion and lapses of memory upon the seizure ending and waking up.) After many, many minutes of trying to fight off the paramedics, I begrudgingly agreed to be taken to the hospital. I was admitted and was there for two days, never making it out of the ER because they didn’t have a room/bed for me. I did get moved from the main ER into the hallway - at least it was quieter there.

My second seizure I was alone at home. For this one I also went unconscious, but I knew what was happening before I fully passed out. (I also had less confusion coming out of it.) The seizure started in my right foot - I had uncontrollable jerking, cramping, and numbing of the foot, which then traveled up the leg. Once it hit my stomach I knew exactly what was happening and I tried to relax myself to stop it from going further but you can’t really control your body at that point. I tried to breathe deeply and realized I couldn’t breathe, and then I passed out. When I came to, my books (which were next to the couch) were scattered - so I knew that I jerked while seizing. Also, my leg muscles were in pain from the cramping. No need for the hospital this time - I just called my doctor and was told to double my anti-seizure meds.

What an adventure.

Finally, for about 3 weeks in April I had some sort of illness that caused me to be extremely nauseated 24/7 and I had zero appetite. Like, I couldn’t eat anything at all, no matter what time of day. As a result, I lost weight and muscle mass, and had no energy. And then one day it miraculously got better. My doctors were baffled by it. It started on my “off week” of chemo, so we know it wasn’t because of chemo. But there are other no explanations that make sense.

So when I started to feel better, in late April, I decided it was time to travel. I don’t know how much time I have left in this lifetime, but I had a bit saved up from donations made by you all, and I don’t want to wait to explore and enjoy what life I have left. So here I am in Savannah, enjoying a slow pace, warmer weather, and anxiety-free time to just BE.

Like I said, I’m so grateful to be here, still.

The view from my balcony out on Ellis Square

Fun fire pit on the hotel's terrace

PS: Also grateful for my friends who immediately thought of "Follies" when reading the title of this blog.

—

So many wonderful people have asked me what they can do to help as I navigate this devastating disease. So I’ve put together this list of things that I will need as I continue treatment.

Donations:

You can donate via my Go Fund Me account here: https://www.gofundme.com/erin-cronican

I will be using any money raised to help with lost wages as I go through treatment and to handle any medical expenses that aren't covered. It will also relieve some of the pressure off Brynn from having to carry so much while I’m in treatment.

Gifts:

Gift Certificates for massage therapy, facials, pampering

Amazon gift cards

Anything you think might brighten my day (I love handmade/artisan stuff - Etsy, etc)

My address:

165 E 87th Street #3FW

New York, NY 10128

Mail:

I love getting cards and things in the mail, so anything you want to send would be appreciated.

Thank you so much for helping me manage this diagnosis with grace, ease, and a little bit of fun. It means the world to me.

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor, producer, and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally and appeared Off Broadway with several plays and musicals. She is currently the Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place Theater in NYC. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com or www.seeingplacetheater.com.

Cancer = A Constant Turn of Events

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 18:27:00 +0000

Shortly after writing my last medical update, things turned topsy turvy for me. Like, within a week, I got very bad news and since then the news just keep getting worse. (I'm reminded of the book, Mr Topsy Turvy, and had to include the cover here.)

April 16 I had my quarterly CT scan of the pelvis/abdomen, and full body bone scan. For the first time since staring chemo in March 2019, the scans showed progression - the thing that Stage IV patients fear every day. They had found tumor growth in one of my vertebrae (T5) and also in my right pelvis and my hip. This meant that the chemo, which had been working for 25 months, had now failed. I was sent to get a PET scan, which would show how active the cancer cells are and give a better sense of the scope of the disease. On the PET scan, it shows that I now have a lesion on my liver (that wasn’t present on the CT scan from 6 days earlier) along with the many masses I already have in my lungs and the previously described new tumors in my bones, including now including the T6 vertebrae. So, onward to a new chemo.

Luckily, the chemo recommended was a series of pills. No more infusion! No more going to the hospital every week! I was just prescribed to take 7 pills every day for one week, take a week off, and then another week of pills, and so on. And…the chemo pills, called Xeloda, would not cause hair loss! Even better, this was a medication that could pass the blood/brain barrier and help with staving off brain tumors.

I started that regimen in the beginning of May, and other than diarrhea, very dry skin (especially hands and feet, which were painful at times) and extreme fatigue, I had very few side effects. But I found myself taking multiple naps and sinking into a bit of a depression because of my lack of energy.

Things were rolling along until I had my quarterly MRI on the brain on June 24. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I was on Xeloda for 6 weeks, many, many brain tumors have increased in size (instead of being stable in previous scans) and I got 3 new tumors that are especially large and causing symptoms. The main symptom is that sometimes, for no reason, my left arm and hand will just fall asleep and it won’t feel like my arm. It’ll feel like a “dead arm.” It only happens for a few minutes and then resolves, but my neurosurgeon says that this symptom makes sense given the location of the new tumors.

Even scarier… one of the tumors in the brain is in the leptomeningeal space - where the brain fluid is. This means that if any tumor cells have broken off, they can travel to my spinal cord. Here’s a list of symptoms that can be caused by this:

Headaches
Nausea (feeling like you’re going to throw up) or vomiting (throwing up)
Difficulty thinking
Double vision
Dizziness
Difficulty speaking or swallowing
Pain in your arms and legs
Weakness or lack of coordination in your arms and legs
Loss of bladder or bowel control
Seizures

As of now, I only have the “dead arm” as a symptom, which could possibly be because of the other tumor (which is on the part of the brain that controls sensation.) To find out of I have leptomeningeal disease I was given three separate MRIs on July 2 (back to back - I was in the loud, claustrophobic machine for over 90 minutes!)

On July 6 I have another PET scan to see if the Xeloda is working on the rest of my body. My guess is no - the nurse practitioner called last week and said she saw more bone growth on the MRI, but I’m not certain where or which vertebrae.

My oncologist has said that if I have progression in any area I will have to change chemo again, this time to Trodelvy. That one causes hair loss, which I’m very upset about. I lost a lot of hair after my last brain radiation and I have been desperately trying to grow it longer over the last year. And many of you know about the difficulties I had with hair loss in 2015/2016 with my initial bout of cancer. Did I mention that I’m getting married in late August? I’ll likely be losing my hair before then. I will be going wig shopping this week to prepare myself, thanks to the services of the 5 Under 40 Foundation (who support cancer patients who were diagnosed under the age of 40.)

Regarding the brain tumors, I’m meeting with a specialist July 7 who is known for his work in proton therapy, which allows them to radiate a very specific area without affecting other areas of the brain. That, also, causes complete hair loss but it looks to be promising in terms of effectiveness. And then I meet with my oncologist on July 8 to get blood work done and make a final plan for my care, based on the results of the MRIs and PET scan.

So right now I’m just in a suspended state of fear and anxiety, waiting for results which will determine my fate. I do try to stay positive but hair loss may be the breaking point. I have worked so hard to overcome many challenges that have kept me from being a musical theater performer in the last 2 years (other than COVID, obviously.) From pneumonia, to the year of recovery from my paralyzed vocal cord, to the enormous weight gain due to (anti-inflammatory) steroid use… my appearance and stamina have been severely tested. To lose my hair is another setback to manage.

Because it’s not just head hair that you lose - you lose EVERY hair. Eyelashes, eyebrows, leg, arm, body hair - all gone. So I’ll have to paint on eyebrows and glue on eyelashes to even look normal, let alone be ready for professional auditions.

I felt like I had *just* rounded a corner with my challenges, and now I’m facing all of this and it all feels excruciating. I’m angry and scared all of the time. Luckily I have a great therapist, wonderful friends, and family who are supportive. There are some important people who have actually disappeared from my life since my being diagnosed Stage IV - but those of you who have stuck by me are my heroes. You know who you are. I am grateful.

I’ll be sure to wrote another post when I know more about my condition. Thanks, as always, for listening and loving me. It makes all the difference in the world.

—

So many wonderful people have asked me what they can do to help as I navigate this devastating disease. So I’ve put together this list of things that I will need as I continue treatment.

Donations:

You can donate via my Go Fund Me account here: https://www.gofundme.com/erin-cronican

I will be using any money raised to help with lost wages as I go through treatment and to handle any medical expenses that might not be covered. It will also relieve some of the pressure off Brandon from having to carry so much while I’m in treatment.

Gifts:

Gift Certificates for massage therapy, facials, pampering
Amazon gift cards
Anything you think might brighten my day (I love handmade/artisan stuff - Etsy, etc)

My address:

165 E 87th Street #3FW
New York, NY 10128

Mail:

I love getting cards and things in the mail, so anything you want to send would be appreciated.

Thank you so much for helping me manage this diagnosis with grace, ease, and a little bit of fun. It means the world to me.

An Update on Cancer and Daily Life

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 17:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve shared what’s been going on with me medically. I forget as I live with this disease day in and day out that many people have no idea what it’s like to live with terminal illness. In some ways it’s harrowing, and in other ways it’s just what is considered normal for me now and I don’t think much about it. Here are a couple of days of significance over the last few months:

January 19, 2021

Today I was at the doctor for 6 hours. That’s a short day for me. Within that 6 hours I had three different appointments, had two CT scans, had 3 needles stuck in me (one shot, one blood draw, and one IV for a scan), had a plastic mask molded to my head in preparation for radiation, and waited for 2 hours in one of the intake rooms. On the bright side, I got to watch both the series finale episode and the series premiere episodes of Friends, plus two others, which were on the waiting room TV. But lordy, y’all - my patience REALLY wore thin. I found out later that the computer scanning systems were down, so they had to type out by hand anything that would normally be scanned.

The appointments today were to address two major things happening to me:

1) My neurosurgeon discovered four more (small) brain tumors two weeks ago. These are called brain metastases - cancer that traveled from the breast and metastasized into the brain. My treatment for this is stereotactic radio-surgery to deliver radiation to those specific parts of my brain with the tumors. And today was a “simulation” day when they took a bunch of scans and created a plastic mask that’s molded to my head which will keep it still while they do the treatment. That mask is no joke - it’s hard plastic that covers my face, head and neck (everywhere except my eyes & nose. VERY uncomfortable especially for someone with claustrophobia.)

An example of the mask they had me wear

2) My platelets have been dangerously low due to chemo. Low platelets can cause internal bleeding for no reason whatsoever, so it’s really problematic. Here’s a story for you: I had a new nurse during chemo one day, and at the end he said, “Why don’t you get that shot that helps with platelets?” People, I have been dealing with low platelets for over a year and I have never heard of a shot to help! I asked my oncologist about it the next time I saw him, and he had never heard of that shot either. So he called up the hematology department, and low and behold - there IS such a shot, called NPlate. Just goes to show, listen to your nurses and be sure you advocate for yourself. If I hadn’t pushed about how frustrating the low platelets were, I wouldn’t have known that there was a solution. Anyway, today I got tested to see if the shot they gave me last week worked. After chemo my platelets didn’t go up, but they also didn’t go down, so they gave me a new dose today and I’ll see next week if it helped.

Back to now, April 11, 2021:

Three Tuesdays a month I have chemo (when it’s not being canceled due to low platelets.) What was once 6 hour days has turned into 12 hour days. Story time: About 6 months ago I was in the middle of getting chemo when I started to feel itchy on my hands. I thought it was odd but didn’t really think anything of it. Then I started getting a pain in my back, which was concerning. I then started feeling itchy in my mouth, so I got a nurse and said, “I think I’m having an allergic reaction.” All of the sudden all of the nurses started shouting, “Allergic reaction!” And “Carbo! Carbo!” (Which is the drug which was in the middle of being infused with.) They tore the infusion pump away from my IV, dosed me up full of Benadryl, grabbed an anaphylaxis kit, and stood by staring at me waiting to see if the reaction would clear. By this time I had a rash all over my whole body and my blood pressure was through the roof (the activity around me was terrifying!) I got better within 30 minutes, and I soon learned that becoming allergic to Carbo is relatively normal after a certain amount of treatments. In fact, they were surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.

This is such a problematic occurrence that I have since been transferred away from my normal breast cancer center to receive care at a large cancer center within the complex, which is better equipped to handle the possibility of anaphylaxis/reactions. I am now on what they call a desensitization protocol, which involves giving me Carboplatin in very small doses over the course of 6 hours (instead of the normal 1 hour.) This is in addition to the 5-6 hours of prep time and the other infusion I have of Gemzar (a second chemotherapy.) The worst part of it for me is not the time extension, but the fact that they have to give me Benadryl, which I do not respond well to at all. I have to be given Ativan in advance of the Benadryl to stave off some of the worst side effects for me (which is intense muscle twitches and difficulty breathing.) With the Ativan those things don’t happen, but I still get other side effects that seem more intense than normal people’s - I can’t really speak for about an hour (my mouth muscles don’t work properly) and my mind can’t really grasp anything complicated for a few hours after taking it. So I can’t really read or work, I have to just zone out watching TV, or by sleeping. Not the way I like to spend my day.

They recently gave me a brain MRI to see how the lesions were responding to January’s radiation, and the good news is that there hasn’t been any growth of the tumors in the 2 months since. It takes about 6 months to know if the tumors are fully killed, and what’s weird is that the lesions don’t go away - radiation results in dead brain tissue that lasts forever. The great news is that I have had zero symptoms from the tumors, which means that I haven’t lost anything due to the tumors or radiation. This is all thanks to us being vigilant and testing every three months. Unfortunately, the chemo I’m on cannot cross the blood/brain barrier, so my brain is sort of a free-for-all for cancer. I will continue to get tumors and the trick is just to find them early enough so they can be radiated before symptoms show up.

Other than that, things feel pretty great. I don’t have trouble breathing unless my blood counts are low, and this tells me that my lungs are still hanging in there. I don’t have any bone or abdominal pain, which leads me to believe that I’m still clear in my bones and liver. I have scans again on April 16 to see if there’s any progression of cancer anywhere that I can’t feel. And I have to warn you - that day will come when this line of chemo will stop working. Because cancer is smart and eventually learns how to grow in the face of chemo. I’ve been VERY lucky to have been on my same regimen for 2 years - that’s rather unheard of. But there are many other regimens to try when this one stops working.

Ok…

So many wonderful people have asked me what they can do to help as I navigate this devastating disease. So I’ve put together this list of things that I will need as I continue treatment.

Donations:

You can donate via my Go Fund Me account here: https://www.gofundme.com/erin-cronican

I will be using any money raised to help with lost wages as I go through treatment and to handle any medical expenses that might not be covered. It will also relieve some of the pressure off Brandon from having to carry so much while I’m in treatment.

Gifts:

Gift Certificates for massage therapy, facials, pampering
Amazon gift cards
Anything you think might brighten my day (I love handmade/artisan stuff - Etsy, etc)

My address:

165 E 87th Street #3FW
New York, NY 10128

Mail:

I love getting cards and things in the mail, so anything you want to send would be appreciated.

Thank you so much for helping me manage this diagnosis with grace, ease, and a little bit of fun. It means the world to me.

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor, producer, and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally and appeared Off Broadway with several plays and musicals. She is currently the Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place Theater in NYC. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com and www.seeingplacetheater.com.

Dear Mom (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 17:19:00 +0000

(See Part 1 of this series by clicking here)

(See Part 2 of this series by clicking here)

A book my mother gave me, with our first photo taped to the inside.

Dear Mom,

It’s been 4 months since I’ve last written. So many things have happened. I wish you were here to experience these things with me.

The most important thing for you to know is that WE WON THE ELECTION. Trump will be out January 20. It has been a very difficult election season, and I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that Trump refuses to concede. First, the counting of ballots took a good amount of time, so we didn’t have an election result until Saturday after the election. And Trump has been claiming election fraud because a majority of mail-in ballots came in for Biden. Never mind that this is because many Democrats have been COVID-conscious and decided to vote the safest way possible, while many Trump supporters still think COVID is a hoax, refuse to wear masks, and gather in large groups with little social distancing. (There have been viral videos where Trump supporters actively cough or spit on other people - which is a crime now.)

We’re having a huge upswing in COVID cases all across the country - yesterday 184,174 cases were reported nationwide. It’s terrifying. I’ve said this before, but in some ways I’m really glad you’re not here to witness this because I know it would scare you to death - not for your own health but for the health of your children and Pam. Nationwide 242,000 have died. In Escambia County, they have had 16872 cases reported and 306 deaths - that’s 4 times as many deaths as the last time I checked in. (There were at 77 in August.)

I’m still pretty healthy, despite having that pesky cancer. I get COVID testing every three weeks, which is not the most comfortable thing. You would hate it! They stick what amounts to a thin pipe cleaner up your nose and push it all the way back until it hits the end of your nasal passage (which is MUCH farther than you’d ever imagine that went!) And then they do the other side as well. But it does give me peace of mind so that when I’m with people or at chemo I know I’m not infecting anyone.

And as far as cancer you’ll be happy to know that I have been stable (or with tumors shrinking) since March 2019 when I started that chemo. Of course, we know at some point that treatment will stop working and I’ll have to find a new one, but for now I’m very lucky. I had scans last week that were also stable, so I breathed a sigh of relief. It’s always so anxiety provoking to do those. I know you know what I mean. But I’m taking each day as it comes. I feel healthy, and that’s what matters right now.

I just had my birthday, and it was hard. It was hard knowing that I wasn’t going to get a phone call around 11am. (Never earlier, because you knew how late I normally stayed up and wouldn’t be awake much earlier than 11am.) It was also hard knowing that no gift was coming unreasonably early because you knew you wanted me to have the gift on time and didn’t want Veteran’s Day to get in the way of the present being delivered. Some years you would send me my gift in mid-late October! That always made me laugh, and I would always wait until midnight on my birthday to open it.

We finally got the house on the market and are currently in escrow. The realtor is amazing. Do you know… she’s a Democrat?? She wrote me a text eluding to the election being anxiety-provoking, and I was like, “What? You’re a Biden supporter? In Pensacola?” I knew I had a good feeling about her. :) Anyway, we have a buyer and you’ll be happy to know they made an offer well above asking. The realtor says you’d done an amazing job with the house - we have 18 showings and 5 offers right out of the gate and more would have come if we didn’t already accept an offer on the 2nd day.

Anyway, we had the estate sale and we raised over $10,000 - of course, 35% went to the sales company but they donated everything that didn’t sell to charity and cleaned the house from top to bottom. They really took care of things for me. I get really sad when I think about your home being empty right now, and I wonder who has all of the items. But I’m glad they will be well-loved like they were by all of us. Before I left in March I paid tribute (in my head) to all of the belongings we’ve shared over the years - things I gave to you when you moved into your first house in Murrieta and things I gave you when I moved to NYC. Thinking about the lives those items had seen. They provide such good memories. I wish I could have brought everything home with me, but I didn’t have room in my luggage and plus, where would I store everything in NYC?

More news: I got engaged! Brandon asked me to marry him on November 13, 2020 - our 9 year anniversary. He presented me with the old vintage wedding set that we had - I’m really excited. I’ve already asked Candice to be my maid of honor - she screamed with delight. It was cute. We plan to get married next year when things open up again - maybe in August. Though, Brandon wants to get married outside, and it may be a bit cold in the late fall. I know you always wanted to be the mother of the bride, and I’m sorry that you won’t be here to be a part of everything. But we will keep a chair open for you, in the front, in your honor.

A few other updates - in July our company did an online performance of a play called DUTCHMAN, and the New York Times came to see it! We got reviewed in the online AND print edition, and my picture was not only included with the review, but it was also on the front page of the Arts section. We’ve been so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with our work during COVID. Audiences are loving the fact that they can watch and contribute to theater that makes a difference - our social justice work is being received really well, and it means a lot to me. I think you’d be really proud of what we’re doing.

I was in the hospital a few weeks ago and I was thinking a lot about you. Don’t worry, I’m fine - it was a precautionary measure because I have developed an allergy to my chemo (I’m all good now.) But while I was there I couldn’t help but have flashbacks to the last time I saw you at Christmas when you were in the hospital. I remember you crying when we said goodbye. I think you knew it was the last time I’d see you, but I was in denial. I was so certain that I would see you in February when my next show was done and I’d fly back down. Little did I know that this trip in February would be to scatter your ashes. At the beach, just like you requested. In the hospital I felt so alone, and I was only there for one night. I can’t imagine what it was like for you. It must have been so lonely and scary. And boring!

I found an old video of us yesterday - it was from the cruise we took in 2009 at Christmas. Do you remember how it rained and stormed on the night we were supposed to leave, so we left a day late? I had taken a video on the balcony while you were having a cigarette. We joked around and you couldn’t stop laughing that wonderful laugh of yours. And then, a little bit later I turned the camera to you and just watched you thinking while you were looking at the rain. You seemed so content but also deeply moved. And I think this was that moment I missed you the most. Because I miss talking with you and hearing those thoughts. I miss watching you take in the world and appreciating the small things.

Thanksgiving just passed. I know we didn’t get together for it very often after I moved to NYC, but we had a Thanksgiving style dinner so often for Christmas that I still feel nostalgic at this time of year. Sean and I talked about how much we missed you on Thanksgiving, even though we rarely spent it with you. We shared fond memories of it growing up.

We got a new dog! His name is Touchstone, he is a Chihuahua-Terrier mix, and he’s bringing such joy to our lives. It’s taking a while for his personality to really come out, but it is slowly but surely. Here’s a photo of him, posing with Feste.

I’m about to digitize all of our home movies, so that we can have them on a computer rather than a DVD (since most DVD are out of technology now.) I’m a little nervous to ship them off to the tech company that will do the work, but I have all of the DVDs you made just in case.

Well, I’m going to sign off. Just know that I think of you every day - many, many times in a day - and I love and miss you. And I hope that, wherever you are, that you are happy and that you’re proud of me. I aim to be your legacy of kindness, humor, and hope.

Love,

Erin :)

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor, producer, and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally and appeared Off Broadway with several plays and musicals. She is currently the Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place Theater in NYC. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

How Chadwick Boseman and I Are Alike

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 22:26:00 +0000

Like so many, I was gutted when I found out that actor Chadwick Boseman died from Stage IV colon cancer. As someone who has Stage IV breast cancer, every death due to cancer takes a bit of a toll on me. The fact that he was young and an actor made the news extra difficult to me to manage. But there is one specific element of his story that I identify with deeply - one I have been hesitant to talk about for fear of retribution, mocking, or damage to my reputation in the acting industry.

As many people now know, Chadwick was dealing with cancer for 4 years before his death. This means many of the films he is known for were shot after his diagnosis and amidst his cancer treatments. But did you know that back in 2018 he began to be mocked in the media for looking “tired” and “bored” and “exhausted”? Of course, no one knew what he was going through, so many people made up reasons why this might be so. Many people accused him of being tired of doing the “Wakanda Salute” when he seemed less than energetic performing it on red carpets and around town. (See articles linked at the bottom of this post.) This upset a lot of fans, and memes were created and spread like wildfire.

Rumors continued to swirl this year when he appeared “too skinny” in February 2020 appearances and in an Instagram Video in April 2020 (some blamed veganism, and some suggested he only bulked up for film roles and was skinny the rest of the time.)

And now we know. He was dealing with a deadly illness that he rightfully didn’t have to disclose. The media and his fans are now shocked and apologetic. But I can’t stop thinking about what it was like for him to deal with these memes and jokes while he was fighting for his life.

I didn’t need to wonder for long. I know - intimately - what that is like.

I am going to start my story by saying how incredibly scared I am to share it. My pulse is racing, my palms are sweaty and my body is running cold. Because I experienced such a trauma that I’m having PTSD flashbacks from just writing these words. My fear is around what people will think and say about me when I reveal what happened - will they think, “If you’re sick you shouldn’t be trying to be an actor. These people are paying money to see you. HOW DARE YOU BE LESS THEN PERFECT.”

So...

As I mentioned above, I was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in November 2018 with the cancer having spread from my breast to my lungs and bones. I was just starting rehearsals for a production of ‘NIGHT MOTHER, in a dream role that I had always wanted to play. Performances weren’t until January 2019, so I spent the daytimes at the doctors (include a 3 night stay at the hospital after lung surgery) and spent my evenings at rehearsals. Interestingly, they found the cancer because in September 2018 I began having trouble singing, and I was eventually diagnosed with pneumonia. (The cancer was caught on an X-ray.) So later, when I came out of lung surgery and all of the sudden I had lost my voice, I assumed it was related to the pneumonia and/or having the breathing tube during surgery. But as I continued to rehearse for ‘NIGHT MOTHER, my voice did not get better - it got worse and worse. I went to multiple ENTs and no one could figure out why it was so difficult for me to speak. I sunk into a pretty deep depression - I could no longer sing, and my speaking voice was getting weaker by the day. Why couldn’t I shake this pneumonia? Would I be able to perform in January? I was worried but determined. In addition to starting cancer treatment, I started vocal therapy and set my sights on the show.

My voice stabilized a little bit - it wasn’t strong but I could get *some* sound out, and my director and I determined that in a small theater my voice would carry enough to perform. Luckily, the character I was playing was deeply depressed and suffered various illnesses, so my voice being a tad strained should only enhance the drama. And for three weeks of performances (picture below), I gave that role everything I had. I was proud of my work and, perhaps more importantly, the performances gave me something to focus on other than my cancer. What started out as bleak had a silver lining.

Carla Brandberg and Me in 'NIGHT MOTHER

Then... the reviews began to come out. One reviewer decided to mention my vocal difficulties by putting his own - uninformed - diagnosis in his review. It was kind, but still embarrassing to be pointed out:

“For the performance we attended, Erin Cronican deserved a medal for her performance as Jessie, as she persevered through the role with real-life bronchitis! The show must go on, folks, and truth be told, Cronican’s struggling voice may have actually accentuated her ability to convey the desperation of her character."

But many reviewers completely ignored my performance and focused instead on complimenting my fellow actor. It’s important to note that this was a two-character play, so to avoid mentioning me in a review is very hurtful, especially given all of the work I put into the play. But ultimately I sucked it up and swallowed my sadness, disappointment, and embarrassment.

Then we started getting audience reviews through a website called Show Score. Think of it like Yelp, but for NYC Theater. The members of Show Score vary in their intent. Some are diehard theater fans who use the website to express their views with like-minded individuals - and they find out which show to see next based on reviews from people they follow. But some use the site as a social media network and rack up likes and follows by posting as many negative things as possible about a performance. It doesn’t help that Show Score’s interface welcomes and in fact encourages this. When you go to post a review, Show Score asks you to fill in the blanks:

1) See it if:
2) Don’t see it if:
3) Also...

The fact that the structure invites “don’t see it if” means that some people will use this section to mock or penalize the production, and it’s further encouraged by the “Helpful” button beneath it, which acts as a “like” button for all of the people who agree with that person’s assessment.

It should be noted that if I were just an actor, I could ignore sites like Show Score and be very happy as a performer. But I am also a producer and am responsible for our show marketing, which means reading all reviews and sharing relevant ones in our marketing in order to generate audiences. So good or bad, I have to read what people say about me and the shows I do. I have a pretty thick skin, but it’s hard when you read things like this:

“Others a bit off the mark. One sounds like she has laryngitis & it's distracting.”

And this:

“Don't see it if you can't handle a downer evening. One performance not up to the mark.”

But, though painful, these two negative reviews were among a flurry of positive ones, so I put my ego aside and set my sights on my next show - THE MAIDS by Jean Genet, which would be performing in late March/early April.

And then good news came in - I figured out wha was happening with my voice, and there was a treatment possible! I was diagnosed with a paralyzed vocal cord, which was injured while I was in lung surgery. (This article explains very clearly what I was dealing with.) The treatment was to have collagen injected directly into the vocal cord, which would make it stand straight up (like it was a bone in a splint) which would create more power and dexterity in the voice. I had this treatment done in February, right after my show closed. The collagen would last for 3-4 months and provide immediate vocal relief, and after it wore off doctors would be able to see if the paralysis was permanent or temporary (because the injection would give the vocal cord and its nerves time to heal.) Luckily it WAS temporary, and though I didn’t have perfect dexterity until later in the year I was better vocal health as THE MAIDS performances got closer and closer.

But bad news came in, too - little did I know that my cancer treatment was not working, and my lungs, bones, and brain became overtaken by tumors. I stopped being able to breathe properly, so though I would feel fairly normal when I was seated, the minute I walked across a room (or needed to stand or sit) breathing would become strained. My small frame lost about 25 pounds between January and March because the tumors were leaning on my adrenal gland causing me to lose my appetite completely and consistently vomit every time I had food or drink. I had no energy, no muscle mass, and no strength. The doctors put me on a brand new treatment which included two kinds of aggressive chemotherapy. I also had radio-surgery on my brain to try to manage the brain tumors.

I continued to rehearse THE MAIDS throughout this time, both as an actor and director. It was the only thing that brought me any kind of stability and happiness. I pushed through rehearsals as best I could with the most loving ensemble and creative team imaginable. I created staging that would accommodate my difficulties. I dug deep into the character and included my own diagnosis in the backstory of the role I was playing to give it depth. And once performances started, I set out every single night to ignore how I was feeling and give 200% to the audience. If I became out of breath, I would find a way to stop moving and/or speaking and focus on my storytelling. Allowing for those brief pauses also brought heightened drama to the play, which many people said was palpable throughout. I was proud of my work and proud of my colleagues’ work, and the play would go on to be nominated for 3 New York Innovative Theater Awards - including Best Revival and Best Ensemble.

I wish this story could end happily there, but it doesn’t - and this is where my connection to Chadwick Boseman’s situation really comes in.

I want to start by saying that in New York City - the land of commercialized theater - there is a big push for polish, pace, and perfection. Our theater company has always sought to break this trend, because to us - if it’s perfect and polished and paced, there’s no room for LIVING. You’re just seeing people on a stage reciting lines quickly and mimicking movement without really experiencing the life of those characters and those stories. Our company always strives to go deeper, to create REAL people in REAL situations, and this is not always popular with those people who prefer the glitz and glamour of Broadway. We have reconciled this over our 10 years of existence, and yet have managed to find an ever-growing audience who loves us for our commitment to truth-telling.

Me in THE MAIDS

So I was not prepared for the vitriol, mocking, and shaming that came at me for my performance in THE MAIDS. Here are just a few of the audience remarks found on Show Score:

“This production is the perfect example of why a director should never cast themselves as a character.”

“However, Erin Cronican (who also directed) was totally off the mark, offering flat line readings (when she wasn't searching for them) and a lack of any passion or energy”

“Don't see it if you need a perfectly cast trio to make going worthwhile. You expect actor/director to know her lines inside out...Coworker Solange (Cronican) feels miscast. She was often hesitant, reaching for lines. Her chopped hair and raspy voice simply make her way too modern and hipster for the role, setting THE MAIDS off kilter. She's too edgy for the room.”

“The dramatic tension in Genet's text was lacking in their performance -- especially in Solange (Erin Cronican). Sunday evening Apr. 7, Erin tripped on her lines, seemed hesitant, was often at odds with the dialogue.”

“The actor playing Solange, who is also is the play's director, was not well connected to the material nor well prepared. A number of the line readings were flat, and there were more than a few mistakes. She brought little emotion to a part that needs quite a bit of it to let the play come alive.”

“Erin Cronican is trying hard but she is the weakest link, maybe because of the oversize shoes, maybe her voice, or just struggle with some lines.”

“However, it's rarely if ever a good idea for one of the actors to also direct the play.”

Again, audiences - who did not know what I was dealing with - were quick to ascribe their own answers as to why they were seeing what they perceived as weak. Me taking pauses equaled “she doesn’t know her lines” and my lack of energy equaled “the director should never perform in the show.” Never mind that I’ve been directing my own work for years to great acclaim, and never mind that I have never been accused by a reviewer of not knowing my lines.

Gaia Visnar and Me in THE MAIDS

I was devastated. It was easily, in all my years of performing, the worst experience of my life. I felt so hated, so embarrassed, so unsure of myself, and so alone. The physical effort I was putting out was harrowing. In the one moment I spent off stage during the 80 minute, intermission-less show, it was all I could do to get my breath under me. I was pretending I wasn't huffing and puffing from running around the stage, carrying props, and holding up my scene partner (whose character was prone to getting faint.) After that quick break, I would re-enter the stage to perform a 4 page soliloquy (a 10 minute monologue spoken alone on stage) with all eyes on me and no safety net. I was exposed, and now every time I performed I knew I was hated.

I mean, what was I supposed to do? Should we have put into the program, “Erin Cronican, who plays Solange, is in the middle of fighting for her life as a Stage IV breast cancer patient”? Do I have to preemptively, from now on, apologize for myself in case I don’t measure up to people’s standards? Did Chadwick Boseman need to tell everyone that he had cancer so that people wouldn’t make memes about how tired he looked and how disappointing he was to his public?

Or - even worse - does having cancer mean that I should give up on being an artist, because you think you deserve some kind of performance that is perfect in your mind?

I felt a little better after a reviewer wrote a very nice article about my work in THE MAIDS, in the face of my illness, which he knew about: Let’s Talk About A Different Kind of Acting.

(It’s interesting to note: when I asked Show Score to include this review on their website - because critic reviews are included alongside patron reviews - they declined because they said it read too much like a feature and not a review.)

Me in ANIMAL FARM

Before we go much further, I want to mention that this performance haunts me, even now. I performed in our production of ANIMAL FARM in February 2020 (pictured above) - nearly a year later - and one of the patrons gave me a backhanded compliment, again on Show Score:

“Cronican, so memorably awful in The Maids, rebounds.”

Even a year later, I’m left embarrassed and like I have to apologize for myself. But the worst part is I feel like I have to defend my decision to keep performing. Because it’s being made clear by some audiences - if you’re not PERFECT you do not deserve to perform. It’s as if they are saying, “How dare you take our money when you know you’re less than 100%? HOW DARE YOU?”

Don’t know you that I ask that of myself every day? Even now, as I write this, I’m thinking, “Well, they’re probably right. People have expectations that I’m not meeting. How dare I think I could expect anything more from them?”

Don’t you know that I grieve the life I used to have, when I *could* run around and having full breath and not deal with chemo side effects day after day? Even now, as I write this, I’m thinking, “Well, that’s not the audience’s problem. That’s MY problem. And no one who comes to my theater is going to care WHY I’m not delivering, they only care that I’m not.”

I’m very lucky that I am on a chemo regimen that, for now, is working and I’m about 90% of my old self. No one seems to know what I’m dealing with based on recent performance feedback, and I’m grateful for that.

But, now that I “pass” as “normal” - do you know how isolating that is? Like, any minute I slip up the mocking and derision will start again, and I’ll lose the only thing that gives me happiness and peace and purpose. It’s a fear I live with EVERY. SINGLE. MINUTE.

You’d think I’d be more concerned with dying from my illness. But living with an illness can be just as insidious. And this is why it deeply upsets me that it takes Chadwick Boseman’s death to get any kind of care and compassion from his adoring fans.

People with chronic illnesses and disabilities fight desperately to seem “normal” so that they don’t have to explain themselves. I hate the idea of needing special considerations. Not only is it embarrassing, but it’s triggering. On top of the physical impacts of my illness, I’m consistently dealing with the mental and emotional ones as well.

And - again - as I type that, the little voice inside my head says, “Well, you know one easy way not to feel that way, right? You can quit.”

FUCK THAT.

Yes, I will be more vocal about what I’m dealing with. Yes, my theater company bio now mentions that I’m a cancer patient. And yes, I’ve been a guest on numerous podcasts that talk about the intersection between my diagnosis and my work as an artist.

But don’t think for one moment that I’m doing to this apologize for my work, or my decision to stay an artist in the midst of my illness. Being ill does not mean I GO AWAY NOW. Having a disability does not mean MY VOICE NO LONGER MATTERS.

As a wind down this post, there are a few things I want as “takeaways” for reading it:

First - Just because there’s a website called Show Score (or Yelp, or any other review service), and just because you may have had an experience you did not appreciate, it is NOT ok to personally mock others. At best it makes you look petty and self-involved. At worst, you could be doing real damage to the person (they could lose their job, or livelihood, or sanity) and it can also do deep damage to the company and their reputation. Is your grievance worth all of that? And furthermore, really ask yourself if not liking a piece of art warrants that kind of vitriol.

Second - I think Show Score should remove the “Helpful” button, and the “Don’t see it if” request from their review model. In the right hands - like a professional reviewers whose job is to connect the show they saw with the right audience - this question can be very helpful. But in the wrong hands - which is MANY of the Show Score members - it serves as a bullying platform. If you feel as strongly about this as I do, please consider sending your feedback via email to their co-founder and CEO, Deeksha Gaur. (Note: Show Score has just been purchased by Today Tix, so a revision in their review system is more important now than ever.)

Third - You’re allowed to have opinions about art. Personal interpretation is what makes art great. But opinions are not facts, and your opinions are not more right than others’. Maybe think a little deeper about that the artist is trying to do - ie: what’s present - instead of solely focusing on what is missing or what they are NOT doing. Why do you have those opinions? What are they based on? It’s perfectly fair to say something like, “I didn’t like this show. I have a hard time understand French absurdism so I had difficulty connecting to the story.”

Fourth, and last - There is this thing called empathy. It’s the act of putting yourself into someone else’s shoes and imaging what life must be like for them, and feeling what they might be feeling. We as actors do this with every role we play. I ask that audiences try to do that as well.

EDITED TO ADD:

Here is the letter I just emailed the CEO of Show Score (click to view larger):

REFERENCES

All show photos above by photographer Russ Rowland.

Here are some links about Chadwick Boseman’s story:

https://cosmicbook.news/black-panther-chadwick-boseman-weight-loss

https://www.insider.com/black-panther-star-chadwick-boseman-michael-b-jordan-tired-wakanda-salute-meme-2018-5

https://www.essence.com/celebrity/chadwick-boseman-tired-wakanda-forever-salute/

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/wakanda-sometimes-meme-now-has-fans-in-tears-after-black-panther-chadwick-boseman-passes-away-due-to-cancer-2830251.html

https://twitter.com/JennyENicholson/status/1299548223346896896

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/entertainment/society-bullies-chadwick-boseman-demise-battle-with-cancer/

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/chadwick-boseman-wakanda-forever

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor, producer, and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally and appeared Off Broadway with several plays and musicals. She is currently the Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place Theater in NYC. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - Streaming now!

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 17:01:00 +0000

I’m excited to announce that we recorded our live Zoom performance of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, and it’s now available to stream via YouTube for a limited time! Through Saturday, September 5, you can see this production that critics and audiences are both loving (see reviews below.) GET YOUR TICKETS HERE.

Named "Best Live Theater to Stream Online" by TimeOut NY

Named "What To Watch" by Times Square Chronicles

This play tells the tale of Hermia & Lysander (a lesbian couple) and Helena & Demetrius; four misguided lovers whose escape into the woods lands them in even more trouble, as members of the gender fluid fairy kingdom decide to use them as veritable pawns in their own love games. Against the backdrop of the wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, and the fiery battle of wills between the Fairy King and Queen, Oberon and Titania, the four lovers are challenged by magic and trickery to finally work out what love is all about. One of the most famous of literary love quadrangles, the play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.

Appearing on YouTube

Tickets starting at just $10: www.TheSeeingPlace.com

Benefiting the Ali Forney Center, a non profit organization that support LGTBQIA+ homeless youths.

Now through September 5, 2020

Here are what reviewers are saying about my work, and our cast as a whole:

"Inspired by the legendary Group Theatre, The Seeing Place aims for an "organic, edgy American style of acting", evident by such turns as Cronican's comically lovesick presentation of Helena, dumped by Demetrius but determined to win him back, matched with her focused, businesslike portrayal of Peter Quince, the leader of a group of amateur players hoping their modest theatrical venture will be accepted as part of the royal wedding entertainment." - Broadway World

"One thing that’s challenging for some actors is code switching from theater acting to camera work, especially the monologue-like format of Zoom theater. Most of the TSP actors had this down, but the star of the show was co-director Erin Cronican, who played both Helena and Peter Quince. Her character creation and immaculate comic timing were a real treat to watch. I was constantly engaged by Cronican’s performance, and found myself laughing out loud alone in my Ready Room at Cronican’s well-crafted and deeply detailed comic moments. Cronican’s Peter Quince monologue at the top of the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play-within-a-play is one of the best renderings I’ve seen in years. Cronican knows exactly what’s funny about every moment of this play, and serves it up to her audience masterfully." - Bitter Gertrude

"Cronican brings a real (and funny) humanity to Quince both as a put-upon stage manager and then as a Prologue who reacts in frustration to her mistakes as she makes them but then gets increasingly gets carried away by and carries off the latter portion of her introduction of Pyramus and Thisbe. DiLorenzo and Cronican suffuse the conflict between Hermia and Helena with energy and emotion." - Thinking Theater NYC

"The Seeing Place Theater’s Zoom production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is perhaps the best Zoom work I’ve seen so far...They brought this magical comedy to life with great depth and understanding...The production gave us brilliant performances with outstanding digital effects and overall stellar direction. Not one of the eight actors came up short with their acting acumen, and notably, their awesome facility with the four hundred year old language. In almost all contemporary Shakespeare theater or film, at least one or some of the actors seem flat or stilted. But not here. All eight seemed to understand everything they were saying, and delivered their lines as if they were on a first name basis with The Bard. They also had such a deep understanding of the play, that they were able to communicate it to a twenty-first century audience easily. I just want to point out, that a late sixteenth century play about ancient Athens made itself at home in New York City in 2020. The humanity of that astounds me.“ - Ewing Reviewing

"The cast performances are strong, with lots of laughs, and relationships build satisfyingly among the characters. Performed over a live Zoom link the casts fine performances are aided by the technology at hand to great effect. Background sets, and even special effects are achieved when the fairies are on screen, and when Bottom is magically transformed." - Talk Theatre To Me

And I also did two interviews about the show:

https://www.broadwayworld.com/san-diego/article/BWW-Interview-Erin-Cronican-Brandon-Walker-And-Dan-Mack-live-streaming-performances-of-A-MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS-DREAM-at-The-Seeing-Place-20200829

https://bittergertrude.com/2020/08/29/autonomy-and-disability-on-stage-the-seeing-places-midsummer/

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

I'm Reviewed in the New York Times!

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 04:01:00 +0000

I'm very excited to announce that my production of DUTCHMAN, by Amiri Baraka produced by my theater company The Seeing Place Theater was reviewed by Maya Phillips of the New York Times, with my photo front and center!

Part of the review reads:

"The Seeing Place production, which starred Timothy Ware and Erin Cronican and was directed by Brandon Walker, highlighted the sexual friction between Clay and Lula. Cronican’s Lula gives Clay a lusty up and down, hungrily takes bites of her apple, a seductive smile creeping across her face. Ware’s Clay smirks gamely in response; he seems mostly unbothered by her odd diversions and casually racist remarks and appears to lust back...By underlining the sexual power dynamic between the man and the woman, Walker’s direction simplifies the larger reach of the play and what the characters represent. The tension becomes less about the matchup of Blackness and whiteness in society than about the interracial fraternization of one Black man and one white woman..."

We also appear in the PRINT EDITION - with a teaser image on the front page of the Arts section:

Read the full review here:

NY Times - In Two Renditions, ‘Dutchman’ Speaks to the Moment

Learn more about our production here:

The Seeing Place's DUTCHMAN

Dear Mom (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:28:00 +0000

(See Part 1 of this series by clicking here)

It's you, me and Dad dressed up as outlaws!

Dear Mom,

It’s been nearly 4 months since I’ve written. I don’t know why I’ve been away so long. Maybe it’s because it’s too painful to write. Maybe it’s because I’m just trying to focus on surviving. The whole world is focused on surviving. It’s a very weird, and very somber time.

As of this writing (July 31, 2020) we have 4.67M confirmed and 156K deaths.) In NY State alone, we’ve had 420K confirmed and 32,390 deaths. We’re no longer the hotspot in the country - our numbers are still among the highest in the country but we just got overtaken by California and Florida. In Escambia County (your home) there have been 7738 with 95 deaths. Most of those numbers have happened in July alone, and it’s not stopping anytime soon.

I’m keeping an eye on Pensacola’s numbers because we have yet to sell the house. I’m holding off until we can reasonably have an estate sale to sell the household items that Lisa, Sean, Pam, Ronnie and I didn’t take. By the way, I did give Ronnie all of your tennis clothes for his granddaughter, and she loves them. Pam is still trying to figure out if she’s going to take all of the office furniture or just some of it. It’s been a ridiculously hot summer, so she’s been hesitant to take on that job of getting the furniture to her house! She and Ronnie have been doing a great job of taking care of the house - the pool is the hardest thing to keep clean and working properly. It’s so hard being all the way in NYC and trying to manage things from here. There was a little part of me who thought it might be a good idea to go back to FL for a little while, but that doesn’t seem to make sense with everything shut down (not to mention the lack of safety in flying.)

You won’t believe the things that have been happening in the United States since I last wrote. One of the positive things was the solidarity NYC has had with the health care workers, who put their lives in the lines for all of us for so long. Mom, nurses and doctors were traveling here from all over the country to help NYC in the height of the pandemic here. And at 7pm each night, residents of NYC would gather outside or near their windows and cheered for a good 5 minutes, some people singing and playing instruments, many people banging pots and pans together. We can’t take credit for it, though - the idea began in Italy as they had the second international outbreak of the illness (after coming over from Asia.) Which reminds me - our lovely president insists on calling COVID-19 the “China Virus” to put negative attention on the Chinese people, which has sown a huge amount of racist backlash here in the US. There has been a huge wave of hate crimes against Asian people.

And speaking of hate crimes... and this would sicken you so much... on May 25, a Black man named George Floyd was minding his own business when he was approached by a few cops in Minneapolis, who suspected him of passing off a counterfeit $20 bill earlier that day. He was eventually handcuffed and escorted to a police car, when he ask officers to un-cuff him if he was being put in the car because he was claustrophobic. They considered this to be resisting arrest and tackled him, and one of the white officers knelt on George’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. George repeatedly cried out and said he couldn’t breathe, and one of the other officers even told the kneeling officer that he shouldn’t be doing that. At some point during those 8 minutes and 46 seconds, George called out for his mother (who was already deceased) and then fell unconscious. He later died.

Mom - this has sparked the most glorious and necessary uprising of Black people, supported by non-Black allies who have been marching and protesting ever since. It’s called the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and it is repeatedly compared to the protests and march from the Civil Rights era. Citizens around the world have been protesting in solidarity with Black people against the tyranny of the police. Most major cities in the USA have had ongoing protests over the last few months. But of course, these protests have exposed an even larger divide between the right and the left, with the right championing police and the left calling for reform, which is being dubbed #DefundPolice.

Trump has done some truly horrible things related to this movement -- and also related to the virus. I imagine you and I would be on the phone for hours and hours just trying to talk out what is happening, especially about how our world could turn so ugly so fast. And actually, if you were still alive we probably wouldn’t be talking by phone - I would be with you in Florida taking care of you and we’d be weathering things out, together. Or maybe I would have finally convinced you to use FaceTime on your new iPad. Which, by the way, I have with me and I am using. It's still named "Flo's iPad" and still have your same password, which makes me feel close to you every time I open it. Oh, and also... my debit card just so happens to have your birth date in the expiration date. So every time I type it in I think of you.

Anyway, back to politics... Our country is truly divided. It has been proven that something as simple as wearing a mask can help reduce the spread of the virus by 95%. But the far right refuses to wear them, saying that it infringes upon their civil liberties. There is a major divide in who is out on the streets protesting for BLM - mostly progressives. Moderates and conservatives stand back and decry the destruction of property but don’t decry the destruction of Black bodies.

Also... Joe Biden is our presumptive Democratic Nominee. I say presumptive because we haven’t had our convention yet. Not sure if we’re even going to have one. Pretty much everyone dropped out in March (Bernie was the last hold-out and he dropped out in early April.) As you can imagine, I was DEVASTATED when Elizabeth Warren dropped out. It felt the same as when Hillary lost in 2016.

By the way - and this was expected because NOTHING surprises us anymore - but the other day Trump actually tweeted this:

As you know, Mail-In Voting and Absentee Voting ARE THE SAME THING. We have all been waiting for him to start suggesting a delay in the election, because he's trailing to Biden in the polls. We also expect him to fight the results if Biden ends up winning. It's a shit show, Mom. A goddamn shit show.

Anyway, I could go on and on about the political implications of everything going on - and I know you’d want to listen. You were always such an engaged citizen, and I know it frustrated you that you felt helpless to do anything. Well, I’m doing something. Though theater worldwide had to shut down all live performances (no group gatherings are allowed) - we have found a way to use an online video chatting portal called Zoom (kind of like FaceTime, but for groups) to broadcast readings of plays to the public. We just did a play called DUTCHMAN, written in 1964 by Amiri Baraka about a Black man who is seduced and ultimately ruined by a white woman he meets on the NYC subway. We used this play to open up a conversation with our audiences about white complicity in racism, even now when things seem like they’ve gotten so much better.

Just a few other things in this update -

Remember when I teased you for bringing home so many things from the hospital because “they were free”? Well, I want to thank you personally for all of the bottles of hand sanitizer! When the virus first hit the stores/manufacturers couldn’t keep up with demand, so hand sanitizer became like liquid gold. Also, toilet paper. For some reason, people were buying it in hoards and there wasn’t enough left for everyone. I had two friends who had to send me extra rolls to help me get by!

I found Dad’s dog tags from his days in the military. I have one of them on my keychain now. It’s the same keychain we bought when on our cruise at Christmas & New Years 2009/2010. I also have another remembrance of you on the keychain. Oddly, the funeral home include a metal tag (with your cremation number on it) in the box with your remains. So both that and dad’s dog tag are sitting next to each other on the keychain, and I think about you every time I pick up my keys.

When I was at your home for your services (February 26-March 7) I spent a lot of time out on the back porch, just trying to feel your presence. I even sat in your chair rather than the one I usually sit in. I spent time watching the squirrels and birds, just like you used to. Its was such a peaceful place to be. I miss it. I miss you.

When Pam came to pick me up to take me to the airport, and we pulled out of your driveway, I got very upset. I tried to hide it, because I didn’t want to upset Pam. But she noticed and asked, “Are you ok?” I shook my head no, and then started to sob. I also cried as the plane took off. And every time I think about the house - sitting empty, quiet, and alone - I’m filled with such anguish and guilt. Guilt that I’m not there taking care of things, and anguish because even if I were there nothing I could ever do will bring you back. Ever.

This week I watched a bunch of videos I had shot on my camera over the years. I found one from 2008 where you had discovered a children’s coin-operated ride - a yellow cab. You hopped in and asked for quarters so that you could “ride in a cab like all New Yorkers.” You were always so silly and fun-loving, and willing to have a laugh at yourself. I also have a video of you from a cruise you took and you were learning to line dance - it was the Electric Slide, I think. You kept trying and trying to get the steps, often going the wrong way. But your smile never left your face, and you never got frustrated (like I would have!) And you started to get the hang of it toward the end. It was so wonderful seeing footage of you when you were healthy and vibrant. I like remembering you that way.

I’m having a hard time signing off from this letter today. I’m not sure why. I guess writing to you makes me feel close to you and I don’t want to let go. But I have to keep reminding myself that you are always with me. Even though I don’t have a belief in the “hereafter” I do feel your presence each and every day. And though it makes me so, so sad I also know that I’m very lucky to have that feeling. And that will have to do, for now.

Love,

Erin

Look! It's us! (You, always tanned. And me? Always white.)

100 Random Facts About Me - 10 Years Later

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 06:17:00 +0000

Facebook Memories alerted me that 10 years ago I published a blog post: "10 Random Facts About Me", and I thought it would be fun to revisit the post and offer updates/comments on what has changed and what has stayed the same the last 10 years.

So, without further ado, here are my 100 Random Facts from 2010, with updates for 2020!

1. My name was almost Colleen. It was my parents’ 2nd choice, and coincidentally, the nurses at the hospital randomly assigned me that name to me via the bassinet name card. But Erin won out.

2. My middle initial is Q. Stands for Quinn.

3. People always think I am taller than I actually am. And yet, I am almost always too tall for my musical theater scene partners. Murphy’s Law. (I’m 5’5“)

2020 UPDATE: I *just* got my height measured at the doctor's office, and I HAVE SHRUNK. I am now 5'4". I'm so sad!

4. I was born a super dark brunette. With a widow’s peak. I looked like Baby Dracula.

This is me with my older sister.
My widow's peak is fashionably sideswept.

5. I’ve owned 5 businesses, and been a mid-high level manager at 3 different companies.

6. I’ve owned 2 properties, the first before the age of 25.

7. I get really excited when the mail comes. And if my mailbox is empty, my heart sinks.

8. I often sing songs to my dog, and put her name in the song. Like, ”Sweet Denver Dog, (bah bah bah!) Good Times Never Seemed So Good (so good so good so good!)"

2020 UPDATE: Alas, Denver passed away in 2012 and it took years before I was ready to get another dog. But happily, Feste came into our lives in February 2018, and yes - I put his name in songs, too...

9. I have an irrational fear of grasshoppers.

10. I adore alphabetizing. And sorting of all kinds.

11. I am really good at hanging pictures perfectly straight without a ruler or tape measure.

12. I have a crapload of family I have never met.

2020 UPDATE: I recently sent in my Ancestry DNA kit, so I'm sure that very soon I'll have other family coming out of the woodwork...

13. I love buying cosmetics. Doesn’t matter how many bottles of lotion or tubes of mascara I have, I always want to try more.

14. I have been a Mac/Apple user since 1995 (thanks, Brent!) and I am a diehard fan. I don’t yet have the iPad, but I have an iPhone, MacBook and an Apple TV. And my old iPod, which I still use.

2020 UPDATE: I am still a Mac geek - add to my "owned" list: an iPad, an Apple Pencil for the iPad, and no more iPod. (Remember when they first announced the iPad and how unpopular that name was?) I don't yet have an Apple Watch, because I don't wear a watch...

15. I am extremely introverted, which no one guesses because I can be very personable, expressive, and attentive. But I then disappear for days because I have to recharge. This is why some of you have yet to receive return phone calls and emails and texts. Oops.

16. I’ve finally realized that I have been lying to myself all of my life - I DO want to be swept off my feet like in the storybooks.

17. However, I don’t want kids.

18. My dog is nearly 15 years old, and I have had her since she was 10 weeks old.

2020 UPDATE: See #8. We rescued Feste and his estimated age was 1 year at the time. If that's true, he's 3.5 years now.

Dear, Sweet Denver

Dear, Sweet Feste

19. I feel things very quickly, and very deeply, but have a huge wall that appears when I am with others. Over the years I have slowly been able to lower the wall bit by bit.

2020 UPDATE: I have been working on this a lot, and nowadays I think I'm much more open.

20. Spaceballs (Mel Brooks) is my favorite movie. Ludicrous Speed- GO!

21. I had a basal cell carcinoma (skin cancer) removed in Oct 2009.

2020 UPDATE: Oh boy. So, in May 2015, I was diagnosed with Stage IIB Breast Cancer - I had the cancer surgically removed (lumpectomy), 16 rounds of chemo, and 32 rounds of radiation. I was cancer-free for 2.5 years, and then the cancer came back as Stage IV (terminal) in November 2018 and spread to my lungs, brain and bones. I am currently in weekly chemo treatments to reduce the tumors and (hopefully) keep them from growing. I look back on the 2010 post and think about how simple life was back then...

22. People actually pay me for guidance and direction, but most of the time I am just making shit up.

23. I have a tendency to fold things when my hands are idle. Give me a napkin and I will fold, unfold and fold again without even noticing it.

24. Shows/movies about redemption makes me blubber like a baby.

25. I write 2 blogs, and am a contributing writer to 4 more.

2020 UPDATE: I do considerably less writing now. I still write for two blogs (this one, and my theater company's blog) but beyond that I only write articles for Backstage.

26. I’m really behind on those blogs (see #15.)

27. My mother knows just about everything about me.

2020 UPDATE: Sadly, my mother passed away this year at the age of 70, on February 11, 2020.

Me and Mom back in 2010

28. I don’t like to leave things unfinished, so I will probably write all 100 of these things in one sitting. (Postscript: It took me 3 hours, but I did it.)

29. I want to donate my organs, because those who outlive me will be able to see me live on in others, and it is the only way I can guarantee that I will make a difference in this life.

2020 UPDATE: Unfortunately, due to the fact that I have Stage IV cancer and my body has been ravaged by it and chemo, I'm no longer eligible to be an organ donor. This makes my heart ache.

30. My left eye is much more dominant than my right eye. (Here's how you find out.)

31. You can’t see it in most pictures, but my eyes have a brown ring around the pupil, and depending on my mood or what I am wearing, the rest of my iris can be green, blue/green or a hazel.

32. I am incredibly intuitive/empathic and take on the feelings of those around me. Thus, people who get really angry or upset can inadvertently make me feel those things too. It makes me a good coach and director but bad when I’m near people who are fighting.

33. It makes me so sad that that my father never got to visit me in New York (his birth place and my home) before he died in 2006.

Me and my Daddy.

34. I was horribly unpopular when I was a child. I was routinely bullied and often beat up. By both boys and girls.

35. I find filling out surveys like this strangely therapeutic.

36. I’m a lot older than I look.

2020 UPDATE: And I no longer like talking about my age like that. 😳

37. I don’t believe in God, but I love that other people do.

38. My sister always had big boobs and it was devastating when I realized I hadn't grown up to be like her.

39. I love camping, but only where there are outhouses. I will not do my “business” in the woods. It’s just about the only high maintenance thing about me.

40. I dated someone with kids once - I am not sure I can do that again.

41. I always paint my apartments with bright colors.

My current apartment

42. One of my acting jobs is as a standardized patient (SP) - I do improvised scenes with medical students to help them practice their clinical skills. These SP exams are required elements for medical school, and I’ve been doing this for more than 7 years.

2020 UPDATE: I'm still doing this work, and I've expanded my work to the corporate world, where I work as a trainer/facilitator and use improv/role play to help train executives on leadership skills including emotional intelligence, flexing management styles to each employee, and having difficult conversations. I love this work!

43. I’ve never had a nickname, but I’ve always wanted one.

2020 Update: This is still true! Leave one for me in the comments!

44. I taught myself graphic and web design in the late 90s, and now I offer these services to actors.

45. “Groove Is In The Heart” (Dee-Lite) is my theme song, and would be in the opening credits of the movie of my life. “Happy Phantom” (Tori Amos) would be the closing credits.

46. My brother and sister both have intense ADD. So does my nephew. I do not.

47. I enjoy reading astrology descriptions. Not predications, but the personality outlines. (PS: I’m a Scorpio.)

48. Red meat gives me massive stomach ache, but I’ll suffer it for a good Philly cheesesteak with mushrooms and cheese whiz.

2020 UPDATE: In 2016 I finally visited Philadelphia for the first time and had Pat's. cheesesteak "Whiz Widout"

49. When I was a kid, my sister and I used to sit with coffee cups and cherry pie and watch "Twin Peaks."

50. My sister (see #38, #47 & #49) has disappeared, and no one knows where she is at. Worse than that - her disappearance is intentional.

2020 UPDATE: She has been found! I got back in touch with her in late 2015, and after our mother died she, my brother, and I have had weekly Zoom calls with one another. It's pretty awesome.

Our "Siblings Unite!" Zoom Call -

my brother and I show off our dogs, and my sister, her cat.

51. I HATE the sound of people eating. Chewing, slurping, smacking of lips. It gives me all-over body convulsions and it makes me want to get violent.

2020 UPDATE: No joke - my dog is eating and drinking right now and I'm having to meditate through it.

52. I could eat eggs at any hour of the day. I love breakfast!

53. I stay up until 3am most nights (mornings?)

2020 UPDATE: It's 2:07am now...

54. I am rather addicted to thrift store shopping.

55. I lived in Brussels, Belgium for kindergarten, 1st & 2nd grade while my father worked at NATO.

56. I have a strange affinity for marketing, and have lots of creative ideas for promotion. These ideas often keep me up at night (see #53.)

57. I inherited my observational humor and penchant for puns from my father.

58. Being from SoCal, I should have taken Spanish in school but instead I took French. (see #55)

59. I avoid most political conversations, but the issue of gay rights makes me nearly militant. I endorse love between consenting adults.

2020 UPDATE: My oh my, have things changed. I consider myself an activist and am in what seems like daily fights on behalf of #BlackLivesMatter and other BIPOC causes, causes for the LGTBQIA+ community, as well as rights for the disabled, women, and immigrants.

60. I adore singing in harmony.

61. I giggle every time I hiccup. The more I hiccup, the more hysterical the giggles get.

62. Unlike many actors, I like to watch myself on film and listen to myself sing on recordings. I will no longer feel bad about this.

Here - you can enjoy this, too.

63. I have had braces twice, had my jaw realigned, and had 10 baby teeth pulled when they wouldn’t fall out on their own. I don’t heart the dentist.

64. I won the high school talent show singing, “Somewhere” from West Side Story.

65. Unless I am on stage, I hate having the focus on me in public. HATE. So, please never sing Happy Birthday to me or propose to me with people watching.

66. Alec Baldwin, on the set of 30 Rock, once told me I have beautiful eyes.

67. I am close friends with most of my ex-boyfriends. I chose them for a reason - they were good people then, they still are now, and they're worthy of keeping in my life.

2020 UPDATE: Still true!

68. I am particularly sensitive about people being taken advantage of (especially me.) I am normally pretty low-key and easy going, but if I think someone is trying to use/disrespect me or my friends, my blood boils and I get into fight mode. (see #59)

69. I love spicy food, and am afraid for the day that I get too old to eat it.

70. I own a lot of DVDs that I have never watched.

2020 UPDATE: I still have the DVDs plus SAG-AFTRA screeners, and I have no idea what to do with them.

71. I did a 2 month European tour when I got out of college.

2020 UPDATE: I took myself to Italy in 2017. It started when I was hired to be the assistant of a woman who takes a group of opera singers to Greve in Chianti, Tuscany, each summer. Part of my work agreement was that she would repay me with room/board in Italy for a week. I opted to stay for 11 days, taking an extra 4 days to travel by myself across the Amalfi Coast - as well as Florence, where I had visited after college. (See above.)

On a boat from Ravello to Positano

72. I’ve been engaged, but never married. Thank the baby Jesus.

73. I adore watching baseball, but have backed off following the game since moving to the East Coast because I can rarely watch my Padres and it depresses me.

74. In my first play (at age 9), I played a Gander in “Charlotte’s Web.” Then I played Grumpy in “Snow White.” I went on to play many, many more male roles until well after college.

75. I look better in skirts and dresses than I do in pants.

76. I named my dog after a character in the book, “Beloved“ by Toni Morrison. Her name is Denver.

2020 UPDATE: Our new dog, Feste, is also named after a literary character. Feste is the clown/fool in Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT.

77. If there is cheese dip on the menu, I’m ordering it.

78. The first inspirational quote I ever put to memory was the Chinese proverb, ”Talk does not cook rice.“ It really speaks to me about motivation and action.

79. I have an OCD tendency -- I really, really like things to be even. Like, if things come in pairs, do not separate them. Eggs from a carton - I wilt 2 or 4, but never 1 or 3. I skim ice cream evenly across the top of the container. And I’ll straighten anything that is askew.

80. I have never smoked cigarettes. Not a one.

81. I find it immensely satisfying when a cat likes me... even though I am allergic to them.

82. One of my favorite words to use is ”delicious.“

83. I have no tattoos, partly because I am deathly afraid of needles.

2020 UPDATE: I *technically* have 8 tattoos now - very small, blue, pinprick tattoos on the left side of my chest to mark the outer areas of where the radiation would hit my body when I had Stage IIB breast cancer (before my current Stage IV diagnosis.)

Handy Dandy Radiation Machine

84. My very first official job (besides babysitting) was at a double feature movie theater.

85. I am an amazing parallel parker, but I am still terrified of rolling back on a hill with a manual transmission.

86. It has never mattered to me how much (or how little) money my partner makes.

87. The first thing people tend to notice about me are my eyes, and I really like that.

88. In high school and college, I took summer school to get ahead - I wanted to take as many classes as possible. Super geek-dom. I also took a ”zero period“ weight lifting class in high school, which happened before school started every day, to support my varsity tennis playing skills. Super jock-dom.

89. I was the best girl’s tennis player in my high school for 3 years running, and the only freshman varsity player. It must have been all of the weight lifting (see #88.)

90. Italian food is my very, very favorite cuisine, but I crave smoked salmon or salmon sushi almost daily.

91. I am super, super, super liberal, but came from super, super, super conservative parents. Strangely, my mother is more liberal now that she is retired.

2020 UPDATE: My mother actually voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016!

92. I’ve never had a one night stand.

2020 UPDATE: Very soon after the original blog posted, this was no longer true. 😂😳

93. I am right handed, but I shoot pool left handed.

94. For my next big vacation, I want to take a road trip and not plan where to stay until I find a town that I want to stay in. It terrifies and excites me all at the same time.

2020 UPDATE: I still haven't done this. Someday...

95. I am terrible at remembering jokes, but most people find me extremely funny. (See #57.)

96. I really, really love taking pictures, but I am afraid that if I get a good camera and learn how to use it, that it will be yet ANOTHER thing that occupies my time and I may never sleep (see #53.)

97. I think Twitter is just about the most amazing networking tool that actors have at their disposal.

2020 UPDATE: This is still true, but TikTok and Instagram are pretty fun for finding new friends/colleagues, too. Facebook is still the best, though, for deepening relationships you already have.

98. I have a ”Wizard of Oz“ Barbie in my living room because I once played Glinda.

99. People LOVE my coffee-making skills.

100. This list has just helped me formulate 100 things to talk about when I start dating again...

And here are 10 BONUS facts that have happened between 2010 and now...

101. I have been dating the same awesome person since November 2011. We live together with our dog, Feste, in NYC.

Here's Feste and Brandon

102. I am no longer deathly afraid of needles. (Having cancer will jigger your fears a little bit.)

103. I still talk to my drama directors/teachers from high school.

104. Throughout 2017-2018 I was a "stand-by" for two Off-Broadway musicals, which means I would be called to perform if one of the leads was out sick or on vacation. Well, one day I was called to perform in BOTH shows on the same day - one at 2pm and the other at 4:30pm - and then I ALSO had a performance for The Seeing Place (my theater company) at 8pm. My brain practically exploded that day.

105. I spent my first time as an inpatient at a hospital in November 2018, for lung surgery after my Stage IV diagnosis.

Post Surgery Loopiness

106. My favorite list of cocktails has expanded past the margarita and dirty vodka martini to include straight up bourbon.

107. My favorite things to watch on TV/film are documentaries. Especially documentaries that are human interest stories or true crime. I absolutely love learning how the human mind works, and I love learning about what humans go through, who fights for them. and how they survive.

108. When I'm in between acting projects, I like to dye my hair with a funky-colored stripe.

Pink hair!

109. I lost my voice for about a year due to a mishap with lung surgery (see #105) which caused me a paralyzed vocal cord. Fortunately it was a problem that was eventually fixed, over time, by a glorious ENT and dedicated voice teacher. It was one of the most devastating things that has ever happened to me.

110. I got a blue checkmark on Twitter. Feels like I've made it...

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor, producer, and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally and appeared Off Broadway with several plays and musicals. She is currently the Executive Artistic Director of The Seeing Place Theater in NYC. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Dear Mom (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:24:00 +0000

You always used bunny ears in our photos

Dear Mom,

Hi. It’s April 14, 2020 and it’s been two months and 3 days since you died. Two months and 4 days since I last heard your voice. I don’t think either of us knew that it would be our last time to talk to one another. I’m sure we would have had a different conversation. I was in the middle of tech rehearsals for our production of ANIMAL FARM, and I admit I was a little distracted. You were lying in a hospital bed as you had done, on and off, for many days over the prior month and a half. You called to let me know that the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for you. We talked about hospice, and I think both you and I expected that you would get to go home soon to live out your weeks/months in comfort and solace. We expected I would see you on February 26 - just two weeks later - when my flight landed in Pensacola, as it always did after I finished our first show of the year. Neither of us knew that you would be gone 12 hours later. Would that have changed much? I don’t know if knowing would have made any difference. I wouldn’t have been able to make it in time.

It’s taken me two months and 3 days to work up the courage to speak with you. It’s just been too painful. But, Jesus Christ, YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE SHIT GOING ON since you died.

I know you must have been somewhat aware of the Coronavirus - you watched CNN compulsively and in early February you would have known that China was suffering from an epidemic. You might have also been scared of it coming to the US. You tended to be on the nervous side, and you knew that, but it didn’t stop you for being nervous. Your worry is one of the biggest things I miss about you. Whenever something big happened in the world I could always count on you to check in on me - half the time I didn’t even know something had happened because I don’t have cable and only get my news from the New York Times online after I woke up (which, more often than not, was late in the morning.)

So... we’ve been in lockdown for nearly a month. I’ve been locked down for more than that, knowing that I am more susceptible to the virus because of preexisting conditions. The last time I spent time in crowded public was March 11, when I went to see HADESTOWN on Broadway. I also got my hair done on March 16, and that was the last time I was with people (except for chemo treatment.) Several parts of my medical history make catching the virus more deadly -

1) the fact that I have cancer and it spread to my lungs

2) the fact that I am on chemotherapy, which lowers my immune system

3) The fact that I have asthma

Mom, people are dying all over the place. And New York City is currently the hotspot in the United States. The numbers have plateaued somewhat, but as of last night 110,465 people in NYC have contracted the virus and 700-800 people are dying PER DAY. We have an overall death toll in NYC of over 10,000 people. And THAT’S only the ones who have been tested - thousands of people are being turned away for tests to save them for those who really need them - those are people to be deemed with the worst symptoms (fever and inability to breathe.) And thousands of people are dying in their homes without ever being admitted to hospitals.

This all would have made you SO nervous for me. Frankly, if you were still alive I imagine you would have convinced me, Brandon, and our dog to join you in Florida and hunker down there. That would have been so lovely. I would have liked nothing better.

It’s not lost on me that you were suffering from all of the same symptoms of COVID, even though you didn’t have it. It’s also not lost on me that I had the same symptoms of COVID last year when cancer was first taking its toll. The inability to breathe. The loss of appetite. The extreme fatigue. The low blood pressure. The truth is, the more and more people talk about their symptoms the more flashbacks I have to last year when we both thought I was going to die. This virus is very triggering for me.

Another thing that really would be freaking you out right now is the stock market. I know your life savings were wrapped up in an IRA that was connected to stocks and bonds. Sadly, the stock market crashed day after day in March. It was at its highest on February 12, at 29098. On March 24 it was at 18602. It has rebounded somewhat - as of right now - this moment - it’s 23860 and hovering.

People like to say that the stock market is just for people on Wall Street, and I’ve been trying to educate people so they know that most people’s 401Ks and IRAs are in the stock market, too. I know that the reason you were so scared was not for yourself, but knowing that this money was for us after you died.

I want to thank you for thinking so much about what life would be like for us after you were gone, and preparing your affairs for us as much as you could. I had no idea HOW prepared you would make things, though! The amount of things you saved, and their organization, was quite surprising! I didn’t know that you had saved every single card I received as a baby from neighbors and family friends. I didn’t know you still had all of my grades from elementary school. (It was quite sobering to realize that I was not the angel at school like I thought I was - apparently I talked a lot??) But it was finding YOUR own memorabilia that was most surprising - and the fact that you labeled it, as though you were doing so for the people who would find the items after you were gone. I found two cards which you had labeled, “The only cards I ever received from my father.” Who else would that labeling be for than for me, who you knew would go through your belongings? I felt like you were speaking to me, guiding me through your past as I took everything in.

Man, you were organized. Now I see where I get it from. I cleaned out all of your filing cabinets, with hundreds of folders that held things like receipts, warranties, user manuals, and of course, financial statements. For everything single thing you bought! And don’t worry, I put all of the sensitive financial items in the shredding boxes you left out for me. I know how much your privacy meant to you, and even after you’re gone it is protected.

I found your note “After Death” with all of the reminders of things you hadn’t told me yet. This was extremely helpful, and I added it to the folder you had already given me with all of your requests. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve been able to handle your affairs fairly well. I’ve had a lot of help from Pam and Ronnie who are on the front lines down there in Pensacola. Especially due to this pandemic, everything has been moved online so things are a little easier in that respect.

Unfortunately, though, we’ve had to put selling the house on hold. Though real estate agents are deemed “essential” in Florida right now, estate sale companies are not and we can’t put the house on the market until we are able to sell the remaining furniture and items in the house. You’ll be happy to know that the estate company I choose donates any unsold items to charity, so everything will go to a good cause.

As promised, you were cremated, and we did not hold a fancy service for you. It was just Lisa, Sean, Liz, Tabatha, Pam and Me. We went to Johnson Beach. I read the poem that, years ago, you asked to be read at your service, and I asked Sean to read Psalm 19, which I had just learned was your favorite part of the Bible. We took turned scattering your ashes. When all of us had gone, there was still some ash left so I asked Lisa if she wanted to scatter the rest. She said yes, and as we watched her walk out into the ocean I held Pam who had started crying. Lisa said that it made sense that she scattered the last of the ashes, “We came into this together, and I wanted it to be just us at the end.”

Lisa, Sean and I have kept in close touch after all this happened. We’re on a text chain, Lisa is on Facebook more often, and we’ve set up calls on Zoom (kind of like FaceTime) each week to catch up and offer each other support. It’s one bright spot in this whole thing after losing you.

A report came out today saying that they think that in-person events, like theater, sports, conventions, etc may not come back fully until the Fall of 2021. This is so incredibly upsetting to me. You, more than anyone I’ve ever talked to, know how limited my time is here on earth due to cancer - what if I don’t survive until then? What if ANIMAL FARM is the last public performance I ever did? What if my last time singing in a musical was September 2018 - in the midst of the pneumonia I caught that led to the discovery that my cancer had returned?

Sunday was Easter, and I was reminded of this time last year when I visited you after THE MAIDS had closed. I was so sick, and to cheer me up you made an easter basket for me. At first I was a little annoyed because I didn’t bring any luggage with me - I couldn’t physically carry it. So how would I get all of these things back home? I told you I didn’t need all the stuff - that visiting, alone, made me happy. You reassured me that you could ship anything to me that I couldn’t carry in my backpack. Looking back, I only now realize that the Easter basket was mostly for you - it gave you such joy to celebrate the little things and be my "mommy" - how much joy you must have felt shopping for the little stuffed giraffe you gave me, and finding the candle with the perfect scent. And the silly things you included, too.

Speaking of silly, I have Sally. I have given her a good home. She misses you a lot - she doesn’t dance as much as she used to, nor does she pose for as many portraits. But she’s happy that she can bring me comfort and joy when I’m at chemo, just like she did when you were in the hospital.

A text you sent to me on January 21, 2020, featuring the stuffed animal
I gave you when you were in the hospital in 2016.
I had also brought her to the hospital for you at Christmas 2019.
You would often make her dance as you hummed a little tune. I miss your silliness.

I’ll sign off for now. There’s so much more to share, but I’d better space those thoughts out. As you know, we could talk on the phone for HOURS covering every possible topic. But the more I spread the topics out on here, the more I can feel like you’re still with me.

Love,

Erin

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

My #BreastCancer Story

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 01:16:00 +0000

Hello, friends!

I recently did a couple of interviews about my experience with cancer, and I thought I would share them with you. And if there are questions you have that are not addressed in these interviews, please leave a comment and I'll answer them as best I can!

DJ Breast Cancer
Podcast Interview
Season 5, Episode 3

The Patient Story
Print Interview
Breast Cancer Stories

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Hear Erin LIVE with Randi Driscoll

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 00:28:00 +0000

Erin was the special guest on Randi Driscoll's Facebook Live program on Wednesday, April 9, 2020 - In this short interview she talks about what it's like to be in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC, how her theater company, The Seeing Place, is working through the crisis, and she finishes her segment by singing William Finn's "Infinite Joy."

Erin joins the segment at the 15:00 minute mark...

For more information about Erin and The Seeing Place, visit the links below:

www.ErinCronican.com

www.TheSeeingPlace.org

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

A Year of Grief and Gratitude

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:50:00 +0000

A year ago I was given the most devastating news of my life: Breast cancer, which I had beaten in 2015, had come back in my breast, lungs, bones and brain. The diagnosis was (is) Stage IV, or metastatic, breast cancer. Metastatic cancer has no cure, and the average life span post-diagnosis is 3 years.

3 YEARS. (Are you f’ing kidding me?)

As you can imagine, this past year has been exceedingly difficult.

It started with lung surgery, where they removed one of the tumors for testing. It was the first time I’d ever been admitted to the hospital (except one time when I was a baby, I recently learned) and it was quite an adventure!

As a result of the surgery, I ended up with a paralyzed vocal cord. As a result, I had to quit nearly all of my professional singing gigs (of which there were many) and I haven’t been able to sing for a full year. It’s only been in the last 6 weeks or so that my singing voice has started to come back.

In December/January I spent 2 months on a hormone treatment to combat the tumors, but unfortunately it did not work and the tumors grew very quickly, making me incredibly ill. At my lowest point I had to use oxygen to breathe while sleeping, and had to sleep sitting up on the couch (I could not lie flat because my lungs wouldn’t operate.) I had such trouble breathing that I could no longer use public transit (couldn’t walk to the bus and couldn’t do the stairs in the subway) and spent most of the time cooped up at home.

Compounding the breathing was my utter lack of appetite. I lost 35 pounds, lacked energy to move, and even the simplest of tasks (cooking, dressing myself, showering) seemed impossible.

And it’s been difficult to work any more than scattered part-time hours due to my energy levels and numerous doctors appointments.

BUT...

IT’S BEEN AN AMAZING YEAR AS WELL. HENCE, THIS GRATITUDE POST

In March I started ongoing chemotherapy, which has literally saved my life. My tumors have been reduced in size and number and I can breathe again. I have been gaining back weight and I can walk without too much difficulty (taking public transit again!) Every week that my body is strong enough to get chemo I do a little leap for joy because without it, I would not be alive. The tumors would have overtaken me for certain. (I'm at chemo right now, as a matter of fact!)

I can sing again! Thanks to the efforts of my ENT, Dr Michael Pitman, and my voice teacher, Eric Michael Gillett, I am on track to be singing professionally again in January. (That’s my goal, anyway!) I am so thrilled to be able to do my favorite thing in the world.

I have experienced incredible grace and love from people near and far, from friends & family to complete strangers. I have received beautiful care packages and generous donations, had delightful coffee/dinner dates, been invited to see plays and musicals, and had home-cooked meals delivered. It has meant so much to be to be celebrated and remembered. With the craziness that life brings everyone on a daily basis, I’m very humbled to have been in your thoughts.

Every day that I can wake up breathing fully, I’m grateful.
Every day that I can make someone smile, I’m grateful.
Every day that I can experience people’s full expression, whether through art, debate, or sharing, I’m grateful.
Every day that I get to express myself, I’m grateful.
Every day that I get to talk to my mom on the phone, see friends over drinks, cuddle with my boyfriend and dog, I’m grateful.

I’m grateful that I made it to one year post-diagnosis.
I'm grateful that I may have two years left.

LOOKING FORWARD

The hardest thing is that I don’t know how much time I have left. I know that none of us knows that, but I feel the clock ticking on my life in a way I never did before cancer. It’s pretty scary. It’s especially hard when I feel relatively healthy but know that it’s a tightrope I’m walking and things can change at any moment. I feel guilty when I get caught up in the mendacity of day-to-day living - expecting myself to CARPE DIEM every waking moment since I don’t know how many moments I have left. (I’ve come to terms with needing downtime, I just don’t like it!)

I have always had a severe fear of death, even before cancer. I have a wonderful therapist who allows me to explore my fears in a safe place, and I’m on medication for anxiety and depression. But I still have these fears and sometimes they are debilitating.

I’m trying to experience as much as I can while I feel well, but financial worries have made things incredibly stressful. I’m lucky to have great insurance, but not being able to work full time has made me dip heavily into my life savings and I don’t qualify for government disability at this time. Every time I pay rent or buy groceries I see my bank balance dip lower and lower and it freaks me out. So I find it difficult to enjoy things like going out for meals and seeing shows because I don’t know where my next paycheck is coming from.

So I’m going to make a request that is always so hard for me to make. My friend Laura set up a GoFundMe, which has made a huge difference for me as I’ve navigated this disease. If you find yourself able to help, it would mean a lot and put my mind & heart at ease: www.gofundme.com/erin-cronican.

OR...

If you’d like a tax deduction, you could donate to my non-profit theater company, The Seeing Place. I’m responsible for heading up fundraising (a thankless job!) and if you’d prefer your dollars go to the arts this would be of immense help to me. The Seeing Place has provided me with an artistic home for the last ten years and your support will go a long, long way. You can donate at www.TheSeeingPlace.org.

If you chose to split your donation and donate to both, that would be INCREDIBLE and you’d be my forever hero.

Thanks for being everything that you are in my life...

Photo by Shirin Tinati

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer survivor, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

A Day at Chemo: A Diary

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 18:18:00 +0000

Since I navigate my weekly chemo treatments mostly alone, I thought I’d give you a little play-by-play of what the experience is like. This happened to be a relatively tame week, but there are still so many things that go into having a successful chemo day.

Without further ado, here we go!

12:30pm - What to wear, what to wear? I try to wear clothes to chemo that service three purposes: comfort, fun, and accessibility for the port. What is a port, you ask? A port is the catheter that is implanted in my chest, and that’s what they take blood from and deliver chemo through. Today I chose to wear a full sequin tank top and cozy sweater, and a pair of kitty cat socks that I received from a friend.

Sparkly shirt!

Cute socks! Look at those little ears! (lower right in pic)

12:45pm - One hour before treatment, I put lidocaine on my port so that when they insert the needle later it won’t hurt as much. Because, folks, that sucker is FAT. Photo to come.

12:50pm - I leave my apartment, preparing to stop for food along the way and get to my appointment on time at 1:45pm. Today I will attempt to walk to chemo, which I have not done since being diagnosed - I have always taken a car. But I have been feeling well enough and I decided to test my body and its endurance. Plus, I’m stubborn & frugal and don’t want to pay for a car anymore!

1pm - I walk past a Dunkin Donuts and realize that I want to bring some treats to the nurses at my chemo center. Munchkins would be the perfect gift. But they don’t have enough left at this Dunkin. Decisions decisions. I somehow convince them to make a batch just for me, but I would have to wait for 10 minutes for them to be done. I look at the time - if I choose to eat my meal here instead of elsewhere, I’ll have time to wait. I say yes. 25 minutes later I have them. (25 minutes?!) I rush out the door.

1:50 pm- Alas, I’m late to my chemo appointment because of those darned Munchkins! But they nurses are not mad, they’re excited to get some tasty bite-size donuts to munch on all afternoon.

2:02pm - I get called in for my labs. Labs are the blood draws that they pull so that my blood counts can be assessed and my doctor can determine if I’m healthy enough for chemo. My nurse, also named Erin, comes in and asks me if I mind getting my port accessed (needled!) in the more public lab instead of a private room, because they’re so busy that a room is not available. Ever the agreeable patient I put my modesty aside and say, “Sure!” She then asks me if I’m excited about chemo being done after today. I confusedly tell her that I’m not done, that as Stage IV I’ll never be done, and she says, “Why did you bring the treats, then? People thought it was a last day gift.” And I said, “No, it’s just because I love you all.” Tears all around. I get asked if I want to wear a mask or if I want to just turn my head away from my port (they take germs seriously!) I tell them I’ll just run my head and my nurse makes me promise I won’t breathe on myself. I tell her I’m nothing if not compliant. She asks the lab tech if she agrees, and the lab tech says, “She’s awesome. 100%.” Awww...

My nurse then asks me my name and date of birth. They do this MANY times throughout the day as a safety check to make sure I’m getting the right drugs and the lab are labeled with the right patient’s info. She cleans my port for one minute (!) and prepares to stick the FAT needle in it.

The FAT needle! Zoom in!

I feel no pain - the lidocaine from earlier is very helpful. For some reason, as she attempts to take my labs the blood doesn’t want to come out of the port quickly like normal. But a combination of breathing deeply and holding my breathe does the trick. We laugh and she says that I’m a pro at breathing. I tell her it’s because I’m a singer.

This is what I look like after accessing.

I also get my vital signs done. My blood pressure is high for me - 109/68. My heart rate is high as well - 101 beats per minute. I tell them that this is because I just walked to chemo from home, so I’m a little revved up. But I’m likely dehydrated, too.

2:16pm - I’m done getting my labs drawn and I’m sent back into the lobby of the chemo center to wait for the results. Most often I’m healthy enough to have chemo, although two weeks ago my counts were way too low (low platelets, low white blood cells, low hemoglobin) so they gave me a week off. Today I’ll be in the lobby for about an hour while they wait for my blood count report to come back, for them to find a room for me to be treated in, and for them to get my chemo medicine from the pharmacy. I get myself a cup of coffee (free coffee!) and then settle down to check out social media.

2:20pm - I can’t get WIFI to work on my computer. Drats. Now I have to use my phone and drain the battery. Booooooo...

2:38pm: I get a text from a friend who I try to convince that I’m a Rambo at chemo - crushing it. I think he believed me. :)

2:50pm - There’s a woman in the lobby eating chips very loudly - the crunch of the bag and of the chips in her mouth is enough to make a woman crazy. But then I’m remind myself that I’m Rambo and can take anything. She’s very lucky.

3:22pm - Success! Labs are positive so I get to have chemo today. I get called into Room 5 to start getting set up for treatment. They start my “pre-meds” by hooking me up to a big bag of saline (which I need because my heart rate is too high.) They give me two Decadron pills, which are steroids that will help me avoid nausea, vomiting, and other allergic reactions to the chemo that’s coming. They also give me a drug called Aloxi, which also helps combat nausea and vomiting. They dim the lights in my room and hand me a blanket, a pillow, and a TV remote. I kick up the feet of the recliner and prepare to watch dramatic daytime TV like the Real Housewives of Orange County and The First 48.

Here’s a photo from a recent chemo, showing my typical weekly view.

3:39pm - Now that the pre-meds have settled in they hang up a bag of Gemzar chemo which will drip along with the saline from 30 minutes. They confirm my name and date of birth. Gemzar’s major side effects are nausea/vomiting, low blood cell counts, trouble breathing, swelling in the hands and feet, or a rash. It can also cause red or pink urine, but I have never seen that. (Yikes!)

4:01pm - The nurses gather with another patient outside of my room in a bubble of excitement. It is the patient’s last day of chemo, and she is getting to ring the bell that signifies that she has finished an enormous battle. I’m very happy for her but a little sad for myself. Because I’m Stage IV I’ll never be done with treatment, so I will not be ringing any kind of bell under these circumstances. Well then - I’ll just have to find a reason to ring a bell in other circumstances... :)

4:17pm - They chemo pump beeps loudly, letting my nurse know that this first chemo is almost done. She adds a “flush” - which is more saline “flushing” through the line to make sure I get all of the chemo out of the tubing.

Here's what the chemo bags and saline look like.

4:24pm - With the flush done, my second chemo arrives ready to be started. This one gets dripped over an hour. They confirm my name and date of birth...again. (You’d think I’d have to be REAL comfortable blabbing my age by now, but it never feels good.) This chemo is called Carboplatin. The main side effects for Carbo are nausea/vomiting, numbness/tingling in extremities, body pain, weakness, rash, and hair loss.

4:29pm - My chemo pump beeps again, this time to let them know that I’ve had plenty of saline solution and the machine thinks I should be done. My nurse asks me if I want extra hydration. I tell her yes, that I love peeing (ha!) She agrees to give me extra for the day. Saves me from having to drink another liter of water at home. Drinking water is very important after chemo, to make sure that I flush out all of the toxins. Grateful to have it here in my veins.

4:49pm - The music from the TV show “The First 48” is so dramatic that my nurse comes in and stares at the TV. Then a commercial for an online car buying company comes on, and we both agree that we would never buy a car online, especially without driving it first. That’s crazy talk.

5:24pm - The chemo pump beeps, letting them know that my second chemo is done and needs a flush. After that, I’m done for the day! But not quite, because they need to take my vital signs (to make sure I’m not dead?) This time I’m 95/58 (normal blood pressure for me), and 88 heart rate (which is normal for me after chemo). They’re happy, I’m happy, so we start the process of checking me out.

5:31pm - The main check out maneuver is to de-access the port (have them take the needle out.) They give me an injection of Heparin, which helps to keep blood clots from forming around the port when it doesn’t have a needle in it. Once that’s done they flush my port with more saline to make sure the chemo and heparin have gone all the way into my arteries. For their final feat of the day, they rip off the bandages that have been protecting the port (and I say rip because the adhesive and my skin just don’t mix. Ouch!) Once the bandages are off, they say, “One, two three” and then pull out the needle, which always hurts more than when they put it in. They press down hard on the port opening and put on a bandage, so that I don’t bleed profusely. (I am on blood thinners due to blood clots being prevalent with chemo - I’ve already had two blood clots in my arms which was NOT fun - I had severe swelling for a month AND they could have travel to my brain or heart!) Once they’re satisfied that I won’t bleed to death, they flip on the lights and send me on my way.

5:45pm - After all of the rigamorole I turn off the TV, take off my blanket, put my shoes back on, and get ready to enjoy my evening recuperating. But first... FOOD (and drink?)

A margarita after a successful day of chemo!

Erin Cronican is a Stage IV breast cancer patient whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Being Thin...Because of Cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 23:44:00 +0000

Some real talk about the impact of cancer on your brain as well as your body...

I just watched a documentary about eating disorders and I’m feeling very emotional right now. I don’t have an eating disorder, but I felt such a kinship with the girls in the movie that I’m still aching for them hours later. I’m not sure how many of you know this, but I’ve had a dangerous amount of weight loss due to my cancer - about 40 pounds lost in a 4 month period. It’s due to a complete loss of appetite which has been happening since February 2019, even before my chemo started in late March. I look at food, and I just can’t eat it. I’m never hungry and feel full all the time. The thought of eating makes me completely upset - I’m mad at my body because I can’t eat and no amount of willpower makes it possible to start a meal, let alone finish one.

What’s been eye-opening about this whole experience is how the weight loss has affected me mentally/emotionally.

At first I was pretty excited about losing weight, because my weight has been anxiety-provoking for me my whole life. From the time I was a teenager I’ve hated how I looked. I’ve always had extra weight around my thighs/butt - no matter how athletic I was. My high school boyfriend told me I had a “butt crinkle” - his term for the fat beneath my butt. No matter how hard I’ve tried, no matter how much I worked out and ate healthfully, I’ve never been able to get rid of that “butt crinkle.” I’ve hated myself for having it. And I’ve never been able to get rid of the devastating memory of being told that. That self-hatred has impacted every romantic relationship I’ve ever had, every piece of clothing I’ve ever purchased, and created deep anxiety every time I’ve tried on costumes for a show I’ve done. I always felt like I was too large to be considered attractive. And being an actor, attractiveness is EVERYTHING.

I’m not sure why I’ve never had an eating disorder. The negative thoughts certainly were there. Part of it is probably a willpower thing - I simply love food and drink too much and that outweighs the negative self-image. I’m not strong enough to resist. (I know what that sounds like, but I can’t put it any other way.) Especially living in NYC... I have too much wonderful food and booze at my fingertips, and too many social occasions are centered around these things to ever have been able to cut back. So I resigned myself to being “fat,” even though in my heart of hearts I knew that it probably wasn’t true.

Fast forward to being diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer... one day a few months ago, my boyfriend said, “You don’t look so good. You’re losing weight.” I asked him why that was a bad thing. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of, “you haven’t lost weight in your whole body, just the bottom part. Your upper part still looks like it did.” I immediately began to obsess over the fact that my upper body was obviously disgusting. I started looking at my upper body every day - when would I lose weight there? When would I be able to buy smaller clothes and finally feel good about myself? I was mad that I would still look fat in pictures, even though my weight was decreasing.

I hadn’t been trying to lose weight and yet my weight was dropping. Which was weird, because weight loss had always been so difficult for me. I went on an extreme diet from Oct-Dec 2018 and only lost 10 pounds. I was torn - on the one hand I was excited to know that I was getting closer to my “goal weight” of 130, but I knew my health was on the line. How was this happening?

Looking back, I noticed that I wasn’t finishing my meals - my eyes were always bigger than my stomach. I yearned to finish but I just couldn’t eat any more. I chalked it up to being busy - I was producing two shows, directing one and starring in the other. But shortly thereafter, my body stopped wanting meals at all. No matter what favorite meal was put in front of me, I couldn’t eat - the thought of even taking a bite made me incredibly nauseous. It got to the point that I was taking in less than 500 calories a day. 500 calories, in fact, was a GOOD day. I noticed that drinking my calories was easier than eating, so I started drinking Ensure Plus in the mornings which would guarantee at least 350 calories (with protein and vitamins) and I would usually be able to eat part of a small meal at night. I celebrated every bite I was able to take and yearned to be able to do more. Unfortunately, many times I would be able to get food down and then I would become nauseous and throw it all up, negating all of the hard work I’d done just to finish the food.

I felt defeated all the time.

I was weak. My blood pressure was really low. I had no energy. And no matter what I did I was unable to eat. I was prescribed a drug that increases appetite but the side effects were so bad that I needed to stop. People keep tell me to smoke pot for the “munchies” but I hate the way pot makes me feel. Each week I was weighed before chemo, and my weight was dropping significantly.

• I started at 144 in January.
• I was 128 when I started chemo on March 21.
• 121 on April 23.
• 115 on May 28.
• 109 on June 18.

Due to the loss of muscle and rapid fat loss, my skin hangs off my bones. I have wrinkles on my arms and legs, and what fat I have left in my breasts and butt just hangs there. I look like a little, old lady. It seems really unfair - I finally am at a weight where I could *consider* getting into a bathing suit for the first time in 15 years, but my body looks really unhealthy.

Fast forward to watching the documentary today. Even though I don’t have the emotional compulsion to restrict my diet the way that typical anorexics do, cancer has made the result the same. I still have an anorexic body. I’m still visited by a nutritionist every time I have chemo because my weight is of such concern. My life is still consumed by thoughts about food - will I be able to eat today? How much? How often? I’m counting calories like a fiend and trying to add more every possible way I can without getting sick. It’s exhausting.

I’ve had a turn-around in the past few weeks. For the first time since February, I have been able to eat several small meals a day. I’ve been holding steady at 108 pounds for the past month, when the trajectory would suggest I would have lost another 10 pounds. I haven’t thrown up in about a week and a half (which was happening daily, so that’s a real win!) I’m probably up to about 750-900 calories a day over the last 2-3 weeks. It’s been HARD to accomplish. I’ve been extremely frustrated that I haven’t gained weight, but my mother reminded me of something that has made me feel better. First, I’ve been eating enough to fuel my body, so it hasn’t needed to eat itself to survive. Yay Erin! But she also reminded me that 1 pound equals 3500 calories - I would have to take in an extra 3500 calories to gain one pound. That seems impossible! So I’m celebrating the small wins as best I can and am trying to go easy on myself.

I’ll tell you one thing - I never thought I’d ever complain about being too thin! Yet here we are. Thank you, cancer, for that surprise!

I’ve looked back over what I’ve written and started having doubts about being so vulnerable. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked so openly about something so fraught for me. But I’m hoping that my openness will help me start addressing the inner demons around this topic. I have a great therapist with whom I’ve started to express these demons. Who knows, maybe sharing my story here will help people who are going through the same thing. I am getting a certain amount of catharsis just from writing, so I thank you for reading this far and being so supportive...

EDITED: Some people are asking about the GoFundMe page to help with my expenses. Here it is: https://www.gofundme.com/erin-cronican

The Daily Grind of Cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Thu, 23 May 2019 19:03:00 +0000

It’s been a couple months since I’ve last updated you - I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long! So much has been happening with my treatments that, frankly, I spend most of my time just trying to navigate my health day to day. And the quality of my health can swing wildly within a day, so there are surprises around every corner.

After I last posted, I had radiation for the tumors in my brain. The procedure was much easier than I expected it to be. It was definitely anxiety provoking, but nothing that I feared would happen put me over the edge (coughing while lying down thus screwing up the radiation, not being able to breathe in the mask, feeling claustrophobic, etc.) I was able to get through everything without having to stop, which meant that the procedure was able to go as quickly as possible - it lasted about an hour. I don’t know how well or not the radiation went - they need 3 months for the radiation to take full effect - I’ll be having a brain scan in early June to see if the tumors have been reduced, or at least stopped from growing.

I started chemo in March. For those of you who like to do research on such things, I’m on two kinds of chemo in combination: Carboplatin and Gemzar. Both are done intravenously at the chemo center, and I get it weekly (with a time off every 3rd week for recovery.) For the first few weeks I had nearly no side effects, which was awesome. I was a little tired, but it was as if I weren’t on chemo at all. But my third chemo session, things started going a little wonky.

The first thing that happened was that I noticed that my arms and hands were swollen, so much that my FitBit and rings didn’t fit anymore. After a few days they got way worse, so I went to the doctor and after doing an ultrasound of my arms they found that I had developed several major blood clots in my veins (known as Deep Vein Thrombosis, or DVT), which were making it impossible for my body to drain lymph fluids. Friends, talk about painful. The swelling has been intense - for a while I could barely bend my fingers, wrists and elbows. The pain from having your skin stretched that much is excruciating. My doctors put me on a high dose of blood thinners (which I’m still on) to help break up the blood clots and keep new ones from forming. After about 3 weeks I’ve finally started to see some of the swelling go down - my hands and wrists are now fine but upper arms are still swollen. My ankles are a bit swollen as well. They are painful to the touch, like I’m covered in a giant bruise.

I also have started to get severe nausea and vomiting. I spend most of my days trying to keep the nausea at bay. Feeling this way has become my new normal - never thought I would need to have a barf bag near me at all hours. Add this to my already severe lack of appetite, and weakness & weight loss has become a huge problem for me to manage as well. Eating has been extremely difficult for me. Sometimes the issue is that I’m nauseous and everything makes me want to throw up. Sometimes I’m hungry but once I go to eat I’m full after 2-3 bites. But most of the time I’m simply not hungry and I can’t imagine trying to force myself to eat. There are certain things that I know I’m better at getting down: liquid rich foods like soups, smoothies, fruit, vegetables are easier than carbs (breads, grains) or protein (meats, meatless substitutes). But even knowing that doesn’t help. I’ve lost almost 30 pounds, which on a frame like mine is a lot to lose. I’ve lost a lot of muscle, so I’m not very strong and feel weak much of the time. I’ve lost so much weight in such a short amount of time that my skin has not stayed elastic - it sort of just hangs there in a wrinkled mess. Seriously. Also, may I mention how painful it is to sit for any length of time if you lose the muscle and fat in your butt? Sounds funny, but dear lord my pelvis hurts ALL THE TIME.

I’ve also started getting mouth sores, another side effect of the chemo. They’re basically like canker sores but bigger and right now I have them right at the back of my mouth behind my molars. My mouth is so swollen and painful that I can barely open my jaw, so eating is even more of a challenge.

These side effects from the chemo add to the regular symptoms that I have from the cancer itself, primarily the severe difficulty breathing. The tumor in my chest obstructs my ability to breathe deeply, which makes even walking a challenge. I can no longer take the subway or buses, because the walking to public transportation is too difficult (not the mention the subway stairs.) I take a car everywhere I go, so in order to save money I don’t really go anywhere. Lying down compromises my breathing, so I sleep on the couch propped up on pillows and I use an oxygen tank overnight to make sure my O2 levels don’t get too low while I’m lying down. It’s pretty humbling to be stuck to a machine in order to do something as simple as lie down.

I also found out that I’m extremely anemic - so much so that last week I had to have a blood transfusion. My hemoglobin count was dangerously low, but luckily it only took one unit of blood to get me back on track. I have to say, that was a whole new adventure! To see a bag full of bright red blood hung before you is pretty freaky - I felt like some kind of vampire getting a fix. And it was a color of red I’d never seen blood have before - light and opaque (almost creamy) as opposed to dark and more clear.

I think, though, that some of the most difficult side effects and symptoms are not physical in nature, but emotional. You have to remember - a diagnosis of Stage IV breast cancer is considered a terminal diagnosis. There is no cure. You may be able to push back the disease for months or even years, but no one yet has been able to cure someone of Stage IV breast cancer. Is a cure coming? Maybe. But it’s not here yet. So what my doctors are fighting for is to manage symptoms and to give me a quality of life that’s bearable - they’re not trying for a cure. I was very upset when I first learned of this - one of the only times I’ve cried about my diagnosis was when I discovered they wouldn’t do surgery to remove the breast tumor because my cancer was deemed too advanced for preventative care (which is what surgery is commonly considered.)

This makes contemplation of death very present for me. No matter how optimistic I am as a person, there are realities I have to face if I’m to stay mentally well. I have to face my fears about death and not hide from them. I have to look at the what-if’s without prejudice. Luckily, I have a really amazing therapist who helps me navigate those feelings, but it’s hard to isolate my thoughts about death to the therapist’s office. Because death is everywhere, and when you’re diagnosed with a fatal illness you can’t escape it. Did you know that most TV shows have a cancer storyline in their season (and if the story involves a woman it’s usually a breast cancer storyline)? Do you know how many GoFundMe campaigns are posted on social media daily with heartbreaking stories of love and loss and a broken medical system? These are in addition to every ache and pain that come up for me - I constantly wonder if is this a new tumor that the chemo can’t touch?

This is also the first time admitting this - my aunt is also suffering from Stage IV breast cancer and has been going through it longer than I have, with poor results. I have been watching her with the ominous knowledge that someday I’ll be going through the same thing. Chemo has eradicated her white blood cells so much that her body cannot tolerate chemo. So while she’s still doing radiation to help alleviate the pain from the tumors, there’s no longer anything systemic she can do to keep new tumors from growing. Right now she is bleeding internally due to cancer in her bone marrow, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. They don’t know how long she has - no one does - but she’s scared and this in turns scares me for so many reasons. Luckily my white blood cells have held up so far but we don’t know if that will continue. And I’m human - I can’t help comparing myself to her and worrying about what’s next for me. How am I going to die? Which organ - brain, liver, bone, lung - will eventually give out because of the tumors? For my aunt it’s her bones. Right now for me it’s my lungs.

It’s morbid. I know. And I’m aware that me speaking about my fear of death make things REALLY uncomfortable for people. The first instinct is for people to say, “It’s ok, Erin. You’ve got this,” because as humans we can’t let ourselves be overcome by fear and the unknown. Letting me sit in my fear seems like being a bad friend. I’ve had people worry about my mental health because of my fears, but not being able to share those fears makes my mental health worse. Because them I’m isolated in a situation that is already so isolating.

Now... there is some good news through all of this. After months of rapidly declining ability to breathe, about three weeks ago I noticed my breathing starting to get better. My doctor says my lungs sound a little more clear. And after this next round of chemo we’ll be able to do some scans and see if what we suspect is true: perhaps the tumors in my lungs (and elsewhere) are shrinking. It’s very hard to contemplate getting my hopes up given all of the things I’ve said above. And some of you might use this news and say, “See, Erin? You just need to stay positive - I know you’ll pull through this.” But here’s the thing:

I need to be able to live in a world with both fear and hope in order to survive emotionally. Not either/or.

I didn’t understand that before Stage IV (metastatic) cancer.

Well, frankly, I didn’t understand a lot of things that have recently become a lot more clear.

None of us know how long we have to live - I just know it more acutely than the next person who can be blindly unaware of their daily health status. I wish I could say that this makes me more ready to seize life by the hands and do all of the things I always wanted to do. But weekly chemo makes that an impossibility, because doing what I want requires energy and time, two things that are hard to come by with so much medical stuff happening on a daily basis. So I’ve learned to value the little things - a day when I’m not nauseous (win!), spending the afternoon with my dog (win!), having enough energy to get coffee with a friend (win!), the ability to nap when needed (win! win!)

So what does this all mean for me day to day? Well, I wake up in the morning and assess how I’m feeling, and then I look at my daily schedule to see what I’m able to accomplish. On days when I feel terrible (and there are more than a few) I humbly have to cancel engagements with my amazingly understanding friends and colleagues. On days where I feel decent I’m able to socialize for short lengths of time and am able to do a little bit of work on the theater company and my various ventures (coaching, design work, etc). I never know day to day how things are going to go but I’ve finally gotten up the courage to schedule my time as though I’ll feel well and then beg my body to do all of the things I planned to do. I get chemo. I go to therapy. Rinse and repeat.

Many of you continue to ask how you can help. I’ve discovered over trial and error that the best way to help is actually financially more than anything. I’ve loved having meals delivered but with my appetite issues I’ve let a bunch of food go to waste, which is terrible. I no longer find need for gift certificates because there’s really nothing I want for. My main hurdle is simply the fact that I cannot work full time so meeting monthly expenses is extremely stressful. If any of you could consider making a monthly gift of even just $5, so that I have something steady coming in each month, that would make a huge difference. GoFundMe allows for this when you make a donation - you can do so here: www.gofundme.com/Erin-Cronican. (EDIT: It looks like GoFundMe does NOT have a recurring feature - so if you want to help recurrently you'd just have to visit again and make another donation. I'm sorry about that!)

Thank you for reading this far, and for being so supportive. I count myself very, very lucky to have you all in my life.

Erin :)

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer survivor, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Update on Diagnosis

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 20:55:00 +0000

Hello, friends. I had my appointment with my oncologist, and as I suspected the treatment I was on was not effective in stopping the cancer. In fact, the cancer has spread further in my body. I now have more tumors in my lungs, and they also discovered 4 small tumors in my brain and a tumor on my ribcage. I suspected this to be the case because if the treatment was working I should have noticed my symptoms getting better, but instead they were getting worse.

The brain tumors, though, were a surprise. I’m not having any symptoms from those. So it was just luck that they found them. Because I had fainted I had a brain MRI as a precaution, but I don’t have any symptoms one would expect from brain tumors - no headaches, cognitive changes, or anything. I’m lucky that the tumors were caught early and are very small.

This all changes my treatment plan. What I had been on was a daily dose of bicalutimide to block the androgen in my body. I’ve now stopped that, and my next course of treatment is to get radiation to the brain. Luckily I’m a candidate for stereotactic radio surgery, which is a very precise 1-time treatment that is able to deliver high doses of radiation to very small portions of the brain without having to radiate the whole head. This means my side effects should be minimal - they will be giving me steroids to make sure that there is little inflammation in the brain as a result of the trauma of radiation. They say I will be very tired for a few days, but that should be all.

The scariest thing for me about the radiation is not actually the radiation, it’s the plastic mold they make you lie in in order to make sure you’re perfectly still for the treatment. I’m asthmatic, which makes me claustrophobic when my breathing is obstructed. This mask partially covers my mouth and holds my jaw in place, so if I wanted to breathe through my mouth I won’t be able to. I was able to handle the molding/fitting they did a few days ago but I was only asked to be in the mask for 6-8 minutes. I’ve been told my radiation could take as long as an hour and I’m freaking out about it! Here’s a stock photo of what the mask looks like:

Stereotactic Radiosurgery mask

Once I’m done with the radiation (which is happening this Tuesday, March 12) the next step is to get me on some sort of chemo. My doctor thinks that I may qualify for a clinical trial, and I have an appointment with him on March 14 to discuss. The hope is that whatever treatment I get will shrink the tumors and help me alleviate some of the symptoms I’ve been experiencing. I’ll be on that treatment until it stops working (which is common, because cancer is smart and learns how to outlast the treatments we throw at it.) And then we’ll choose another chemo and start the ride again.

All in all, I guess I’ve been pretty lucky. I read about other patients’ experiences on message boards and there are dozens of other symptoms I could be experiencing. So though life is difficult, I’m still really grateful. I have enough breath to live, enough energy to snuggle my dog, and tons of friends around me to lift me up. And your financial support has made a huge impact, making it possible for me to take cars when I’m too weak to walk/take public transit and allowing me to have enough fresh food to keep me going. You’ve also helped me pay for co-pays, medications, and have brought me such joy in a dark time.

For those of you still interested in helping... here’s a post with all of the things that I need - I’m eternally grateful for anything you’re willing and able to do to help: https://www.erincronicals.com/2018/11/how-you-can-help.html

Or, if you want your gift to go even further, consider donating to my theater company as we embark on our spring repertory. As you know, The Seeing Place has been my artistic home and donating here means I don't have to use any personal money to get these shows up and running. Plus, you can either choose a great perk, or get a full tax deduction by bypassing the perks and entering your own amount at the bottom. Donate here: www.TheSeeingPlace.org

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer survivor, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Symptoms From Cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 17:21:00 +0000

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog, and people have been wondering how things are going. It seems curt to say, “I’ve been busy dealing with cancer” but that’s kind of the truth.

You wouldn’t believe how much effort goes into trying to stay well once you get a terminal diagnosis. There are so many symptoms from the cancer, side effects from the treatment, and then difficulties from trying to live - and they all exhaust me. I try to stay positive, because being positive is one way I have control over what’s going on. But I have to be honest. This whole thing is really, really hard.

Over the last few months there has been quite a lot that I’ve been dealing with physically:

Shortness of Breath
This, my friends, is no joke. My shortness of breath is extreme. I can’t walk AT ALL without getting winded, and doing anything strenuous (including climbing stairs or lifting packages) puts me into a huffing and puffing mess. And this kind of breathlessness is not like normal breathlessness, when you push yourself too hard. I literally cannot catch my breath because my breathing is too shallow to begin with - my chest is tight and I can only breath in a short amount before I have to breath out again. So doing anything strenuous causes extreme discomfort - and worse, it creates a panic response and can trigger a panic attack if I don’t actively calm myself. This difficulty happens EVERY TIME I climb stairs - in the subway, in my apartment, in other buildings. In order to make sure I don’t pass out, I have to walk VERY slowly up the stairs (much to the annoyance of other subway passengers - I usually wait for the rush to pass before I try to go up the stairs.) And by the time I’m at the top of the stairs, I’m breathing so heavily that people either stare or ask me if I’m ok. I have to breathlessly thank them and let them know I have a lung condition.

Loss of Appetite
Food is not very much fun these days. Because I can’t really eat it. I have 2-3 bites of something and immediately feel full. For the past month, I’ve lost weight and lost energy. (Although, I admit that losing weight is kind of fun, the lack of energy really sucks.) Which leads to...

Fainting
Yeah, so this is a thing. I happen to have low blood pressure and for the past two months I’ve noticed that I get very lightheaded when I stand up. Well, one night I stood up too quickly and got lightheaded, and I leaned over in the kitchen to try to steady myself. Next thing I knew I was on the floor with blood pouring out of my face, because I had fainted and my glasses had gouged my brow bone and eyelid. I was very, very lucky - no real damage other than two cuts and massive bruising and swelling. It could have been so much worse. But it was really scary. Not sure if it's the low blood pressure or the low energy or a combination of both, but all of this has led to me getting a brain MRI, which I'll get to results for next week.

Paralyzed Vocal Cord
After 3 months of speaking difficulties, I finally got a diagnosis - my right vocal cord is paralyzed. This likely happen as a result of the lung surgery I had in November. Strangely, the nerve that serves the larynx wraps down into the lungs and it can often be damaged during surgery. This was the case with me, and it took so long to diagnose because I assumed that I was simply recovering from the breathing tube that they used during surgery. But I wasn’t getting better, and no speech therapy or medicinal fixes worked to solve the problem. Once I got diagnosed, everything began to make sense and I could finally find a specialist that could help. Paralysis can be permanent or temporary - some cords/nerves heal themselves over time, and that’s the hope for mine. I had a procedure done last week to put a temporary “filler” in my vocal cord to strengthen it, and I’ve noticed a huge improvement already. The filler will solve things while my nerve (hopefully) heals itself. The doctor said the filler will last 3-4 months, and it can be done again if my nerve hasn’t regenerated by the time it wears off.

Coughing
Due to the tightness in my chest and the immense amount of mucus and fluid that comes from the cancer, I have a very labored cough. It’s especially bad in the morning (after lying down all night) and most mornings I cough so much that I throw up, sometimes multiple times. It’s very difficult for me to have what they call a “productive” cough, because of my paralyzed vocal cord. The vibration from the cords when coughing can loosen mucus, but since one of mine doesn’t move coughing doesn’t really work very well, so I end up drowning in my own mucus. (Gross, I know, but it’s a fact.)

All of the above has had its weight on me emotionally. Not being able to speak fully, not being able to breath, not being able to move fully for fear of fainting... this all makes it difficult to socialize or find the energy to do anything fun. Thank goodness for social media, where I can stay connected to people and live somewhat vicariously through them.

It’s also had a huge impact financially. Since my doctors' offices are often far away from public transit, I’m forced to use taxis and hired cars to get to doctor’s appointments because I can't breathe well enough to walk. I’m also using Seamless more often than I’d like to admit because it’s hard for me to get to the store to buy food and even when I have food it's hard to get the energy to cook. Working is very difficult with all of the physical ailments I have (and doctor’s appointments take up so much time - I had 6 last week alone.) So finances have taken a huge toll. So many of you have written and asked how you could help. I’ll refer to you a blog post I wrote about that - I’m eternally grateful for anything you’re willing and able to do to help: https://www.erincronicals.com/2018/11/how-you-can-help.html

I’ll have a further update on my health next week after I meet with my oncologist - I’ll be learning whether or not my treatment has been working or whether my cancer has spread. Please keep me in your thoughts...

Erin :)

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer patient whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Feeling Betrayed By My Body

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 17:53:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone for their love and well wishes as I went through surgery in late November. It was quite an experience spending my first ever time in a hospital overnight (why don’t they let you sleep when you’re in the hospital?!) I’ve been healing very nicely from the surgery. I have three incisions - one in the arm pit, one in the side, and one in the back, through which the surgeon used instruments to remove one of the tumors from my lung. That tumor was sent for testing, the results of which I should receive sometime this week. Once the results are received, we’ll know what kind of treatments will be possible to try to stop the cancer.

For those who have asked, if you’re looking for ways to help or support me, you can find information here: https://www.erincronicals.com/2018/11/how-you-can-help.html

I do have one major side effect that has made things very difficult for me. As many of you know, I am a singer and this cancer has caused me to lose my singing voice. The cancer and subsequent surgery have caused a lot of mucus to get created, and it’s particularly nasty and thick. For some reason, it likes to hang out on my vocal cords and no amount of water, steroids, antibiotics, steaming, supplements, clearing of the throat, etc, make it budge. The result is me sounding like a frog (no joke) when I try to sing. It’s baffling doctors and it has caused me to have to forgo the one piece of personal expression that means the most to me.

What’s it been like to have lost my singing voice? A betrayal ... I feel betrayed by my body. I’m left feeling a sort of despair I have never felt before. Part of the despair is deep sadness for time I’m losing performing this holiday season (I’ve had to back out of 4 performances) while also losing an important thing that makes me feel happy. I feel like I’ve let down the producers in my life because I’ve had to back out of projects that for which they counted on me. Each time I see videos of friends singing I ache to be able to join them, and then feel despair that I can’t. Part of the despair is a crippling fear that my voice will never get better. (I have been having vocal problems since August due to the pneumonia that I am still dealing with.) I’m also filled with anger - it just doesn’t seem fair that I’ve had to go through this for so long... and then I become angry at myself for being so self-involved to despair so much. It leaves me feeling defeated, which is not common for me.

I have to mention how difficult it is for me to share so vulnerably. So many people see me as strong and capable, and I want to be that for people. I don’t want people to think I’m complaining or that I’m giving up. But if I only shared on the days when I feel invincible, you’ll never really know what it’s like to live with Stage IV cancer. And that feels even more disingenuous.

So that’s what it’s like to be me right now, for better or for worse. I have much happier moments when I’m not thinking about singing, but my heart aches when I remember that my voice isn’t working the way I want it to. When I got to my oncologist next week I’ll ask for a referral to a voice ENT and hopefully she/he will be able to address the issue. My goal is to have everything back in working order by December 16 (the next time I’m scheduled to sing.) In the meantime, it’s back to supplements, steaming, water and hopeful thinking.

-----

As a reminder, if you’re looking for ways to help or support me, you can find information here: https://www.erincronicals.com/2018/11/how-you-can-help.html

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer survivor, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

How You Can Help

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 22:34:00 +0000

So many wonderful people have asked me what they can do to help as I navigate this devastating diagnosis. So I’ve put together this list of things that I will need as I head into treatment.

Donations:

You can donate via my Go Fund Me account here: https://www.gofundme.com/erin-cronican

I will be using any money raised to help with lost wages as I go through treatment and to handle any medical expenses that might not be covered. It will also relieve some of the pressure off Brandon from having to carry so much while I’m in treatment.

Gifts:

• Gift Certificates for massage therapy, facials, pampering, healing
• Amazon gift cards (to buy products that will help with my treatment)
• Starbucks gift cards (because I will never give up on caffeine)
• Seamless gift cards (send to email address "erin@erincronican.com")
• A gift of housecleaning. I have a wonderful cleaner who charges $80 for a session, and if you want to send me a check earmarked for that, that would be amazing.
• Anything you think might brighten my day (I love handmade/artisan stuff - Etsy, etc)

My address:

165 E 87th Street #3FW
New York, NY 10128

Mail & Email:

I love getting cards and things in the mail, so anything you want to send would be appreciated.

I also appreciate cute animal videos that make me laugh, which you can email to erin@erincronican.com or text to 917-574-0417.

Thank you so much for helping me manage this diagnosis with grace, ease, and a little bit of fun. It means the world to me.

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer survivor, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.

Yes, I have Stage IV Breast Cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 16:57:00 +0000

The diagnosis has hit me like a ton of bricks.

Breast cancer has come back and has spread to my lungs. This is called Stage IV Breast Cancer, with metastasis (“mets”) to the lungs. Quoting Margaret Edson from the play, WIT - “Stage IV - there is no Stage V.”

So what does this mean? In the short term, it means I will be on some cocktail of chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and/or immunotherapy for the rest of my life. In the long term, my life is not going to be that long. People with my kind of cancer tend to survive 3-5 years.

Yep. 3-5 years. That’s all the doctor’s say I have left to live.

The hope is that treatment will shrink the tumors and keep them from spreading for as many years as possible. I’m young and relatively healthy, so I should be able to tolerate treatment well. And the hope is that I’ll have enough energy to continue to do what I love doing - performing, producing and teaching.

But I have to be honest - it’s very hard to see the positives when I know disease is cutting everything short. I know it’s early - I only just found out yesterday - so it’s natural to feel upset. And I’m sure that the anxiety and depression will lift to reveal more purpose and direction than I had before the diagnosis.

But right now... I’m just angry. And scared. And so, so sad. And no amount of “Kum-ba-yah” makes me feel any better. It makes me feel alone. Alone because I am one of the few who knows how I’m going to die and what the relative time frame is, and that’s an isolating feeling. I also feel guilty about the impact this is having on my family and close friends, so I’m fighting the urge to pull away as to protect them. To protect YOU.

Not to mention the impact my bank account. That’s terrifying.

I have all the feels.

For those of you who know me, you know I won’t allow myself to feel this way for long. But I thought it was important to let you know the truth of what it’s like for me. Because that kind of honesty provides me a sort of catharsis in this crazy situation.

It fucking sucks.

When Cancer Comes Back

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 02:39:00 +0000

On October 29 at 1:42pm I received the second worst phone call of my life.

“I’m sorry. Your tests show breast cancer...again.”

The worst phone call was when I was diagnosed with cancer the first time, which was also over the phone.

Phones are not really my friend these days.

To give this news some context...What most people don’t understand is the debilitating fear that cancer will return. Every cancer survivor bends over backwards to avoid recurrence, and for breast cancer survivors the magic number is 5. If you can make it 5 years without a recurrence, your odds go back to as though you’ve never had cancer. But during the 5 year window, the survivor is pummeled with fear and anxiety. So much so for me that I’m in therapy three days a week and am on two different types of anti-depressants just to get through life.

My dreaded phone call came at 3.5 years. What was fear became reality.

There are mostly questions right now, and not many answers. Has the cancer spread throughout my body, or is it “just” contained within my breast? If “just” in my breast, will I have to have chemo or will surgery be enough? Will I need a double mastectomy or will a single one suffice? Will I get reconstruction or stay flat-chested? Will I be able to work, or will I lose my business (like I nearly did last time)? Will I have to take time off from acting? Am I going to die soon?

Am I going to die soon?

I find out some answers on Tuesday when I meet with my oncologist to go over my PET scan results. The PET scan looks at the body to find where cancer is lurking. It will tell us if what I have is a local recurrence (“just” the breast) or a distant recurrence (spread outside of the breast.) If it is “just” a local recurrence, I will have treatment (surgery/chemo, etc) and then start another 5 year journey of fearing its return. If it is a distant recurrence (also called metastatic breast cancer) it is considered terminal with no cure, and a 3-5 year prognosis.

I’m emphasizing “just” for a reason. If I’m not careful, I’ll underplay what is happening and look at “cancer ‘just’ in my breast” as something positive. I guess it is, if we think the alternative. But it’s not positive. It’s gut-wrenching. And I’m somehow deprived of grieving/raging/lamenting because I don’t yet know if it’s “just” local cancer or if it’s terminal. So I’m stuck in some kind of terrible limbo between two terrible diagnoses not knowing how to feel.

I only know how to feel afraid.

The PET scan will prove one way or another, and I’ll know on Tuesday. I’m sure I’ll report back shortly afterward so that you won’t be kept hanging like I have been.

Waiting sucks.

But I’m gonna try to live fully while I wait.

My journey to MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Tue, 08 May 2018 23:43:00 +0000

Me in MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE.
Photos by Russ Rowland. Projections by L Wilson-Spiro.

I’m proud to say that I’m in the midst of one of the most rewarding and difficult artistic experiences I’ve ever had - playing Rachel in the one woman play - MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE. The journey I’ve taken to finally be able to produce and perform in this play has been long and arduous.

I first heard about Rachel Corrie when most everyone else did - in mid 2003 when her death was announced world-wide. I remember that this was the first time I had ever heard of “non-violent direct action” as a tactic toward bringing change. I had no idea that were activists with the courage to stand up to tanks and bulldozers. I researched her story and grieved for her. I think this might have been the first time I thought about activism for myself.

Later that year, a theater company I had helped to start - Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company in San Diego - decided to present a world premiere play as its first production. It was called REMAINS, written by Seema Sueko, which was based on a true story about an American of Pakistani & Japanese descent going to Israel for a college program. Seema decided to use Rachel Corrie’s story as an inspiration and dramatized her true story with a fictional death of the character. The action of the play took place after the lead character died and the remains of her life - journals and clothing - were shipped back to her mother. We see this character come to life through the reading of the journals, bouncing back and forth between the past and the present, highlighting the wonderful people she met and also deep racism that she experienced. As a producer I was very proud of the show, and as an actor I was a little envious. This character was written to be non-white, so I would never get to tell this story as a performer. But I was so glad to see the play produced and received so well, especially as the company’s first venture.

So you can imagine what it was like to learn about the play MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE, constructed in much the same way. With my newfound passion for activism through theater, I knew I was destined to make the show happen.

Fast forward to now... I had NO idea how challenging it would be to perform a 90 minute play with just myself on the stage. Putting aside the line memorization (which is crazy!) it’s both thrilling and daunting to just have myself to rely on, to carry the show with energy and focus. No one to rely upon but myself.

But the biggest challenge has been the boycotts and protests.

This play touches on some very deep issues regarding the violence in Gaza - namely, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes in the occupied part of the Israeli/Palestinian region. By having a play that is sympathetic to the plights of those people, we’ve received angry emails from community members and longtime patrons calling for the cancelation of the play. People have said that what were doing is vile and anti Semitic and that we’re glorifying a murderer. Rachel Corrie never harmed a soul.

Though people like to think of the play as a historical play, it’s not. It’s a portrait of a girl who puts herself in harm’s way to bring peace to a war-torn region. Even the character says that her experiences are not the reality - she acknowledges that she is seeing one angle based on privilege and locale. And she also acknowledges that there’s a “distinction between Israel’s policies as a state and all Jewish people.”

Many Jewish people who have seen the show have said that it was not nearly as controversial as they had feared, and one proudly Pro-Israel gentleman even said, “This is exactly what I hoped the play would be.” But it’s still challenging for people to set aside their concerns for 90 minutes to hear an alternative point of view. As one patron shared, seeing a single performer share one side of an issue for that long can be alienating. Just the other day, in the first 20 minutes of the play we had a patron shout “This is insane!” at me multiple times and then later storm out, leaving this little note for us in the lobby before she slammed the door behind her. I was left stunned on the stage, as this happened right to me as I was performing.

This is the note left by the woman who shouted at me during my performance

We’ve had deep conversations at the end of each play where the audience members get to talk about their experiences with the subject matter and their impressions about the questions the play raises. And this is the most rewarding part of the whole thing - hearing people from all sides TALK and not just ignore and rebuff what the other side has to say.

But all of the conversation in the world is useless if people aren’t able to learn about the show. Many reviewers have refused to critique the show - our press rep said that she received significant pushback when she sought reviewers. But audiences have been making reviews of their own, most of them very positive (and some of them incendiary.) You can see those reviews here: https://www.show-score.com/off-off-broadway-shows/my-name-is-rachel-corrie

We are in the final week of shows, so if this post has piqued your interest, I would absolutely love for you to come. Here’s my show schedule:

Wed, May 9 - 12pm

Wed, May 9 - 8pm

Fri, May 11 - 3pm

Sat, May 12 - 8pm

Sun, May 13 - 4:30pm

Tickets range from $10-$30, with free tickets to AEA members who show their cards at the door. Tickets can be purchased at www.TheSeeingPlace.com.

Me in MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE.
Photos by Russ Rowland. Projections by L Wilson-Spiro.

2017 Retrospective ... In Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 18:05:00 +0000

I originally got this idea from Bonnie Gillespie. Every year, this casting director answers the same batch of questions, and I've taken it on for myself. (Check out this blast form the past from 2010 - I was such a baby back then!)

So, without further ado, here is a recap of my 2017...

What did you do in 2017 that you’d never done before?

I traveled by myself to Italy! I took advantage of an offer from the Daniel Ferro Vocal Program to work in their office for 6 weeks in exchange for rom and board in Tuscany. All I would have to do was pay for my own ticket to fly. It was an amazing experience - I was there for 10 days and was forced to use a language I didn’t know and meet people I otherwise wouldn’t have. I can’t wait to do something like that again.

A view of Positano, Italy

I met these fiesty Australians in my adventures on Florence

Did you keep your 2017 resolutions? Will you make resolutions for 2018?

I always have the same resolution - “This will be the best year of my life.” I came up with this on New Year’s Eve 2000/2001 (holy crap- 10 years ago.) I had listened to the old song, “Summer of 69” by Bryan Adams, and there’s a refrain that says, “Those were the best years of my life.” I realized that I couldn’t claim this -- I had no “best years” and, by god, I wanted to create some.

What I really focused on in 2017 was reclaiming my life from cancer. I committed to making enough money to cover rent with performing gigs, so I auditioned more frequently and by October I reached my goal! I’m now singing at a church once a week and am the standby on two Off Broadway shows. Amazing!

My 2018 is all centered around working less and earning more:

• For my coaching business it means moving a lot of what I do online so that more people can benefit, and then I can make sure I have enough time for the in-person coaching for those who really need it.

• For The Seeing Place it means applying for more grants, building a board, and delegating to more ensemble members so that we can raise more money with less work hanging over my head.

• For my acting career, this means that I want great representation and the ability to do TV and film projects whose residuals will make a better lifestyle much easier.

• And personally, this means that I want to treat my body like the temple it is and create energy and strength now so that I can keep it healthy for years to come.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Not "close" close, but I know a lot of people who had babies or are pregnant and I can’t wait to hold them?

Did anyone close to you die?

Not terribly close, but there were some incredible losses in our community

What date from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory and why?

December 23 - the day I went on as a standby in SISTAS - my first commercial Off Broadway credit!

What countries did you visit?

Italy, though I didn’t fly through Germany and went through customs there...

What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?

More physical strength, which has been hard to get back after surgery for cancer. I also would like to have more money.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Definitely going into the two shows Off Broadway. I didn’t have a formal rehearsal for either project, so my time on stage in front of an audience was my first rehearsal for both musicals. But I rose to the challenge and had a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again!

What was your biggest failure?

I had to borrow money from my mother earlier in the year because I was having trouble paying rent. My coaching business ebbs and flows, and as I was trying to get my acting career to the next level my coaching career suffered. It wasn’t until the fall that things started to stabilize. That was a really hard time.

Did you suffer illness or injury?

I’m still dealing with the fallout of cancer and its treatment, and I was diagnosed with anxiety and major depression. Luckily I have therapists and medication that are helping me navigate everything.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

My boyfriend. We’ve been together for 6 years and he never ceases to amaze me. He took a huge step forward at work by becoming one of their best and most well loved employees, and he also does great work with our theater company. Not to mention that he also has worked hard to keep our relationship strong.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

A certain president who shall not be named, as well as a certain speaker of the house and that person’s cohorts. Boooooooooo...

Where did most of your money go?

Rent. For sure. Eating out is a close second.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

My gosh... getting cast in THIS ONE’S FOR THE GIRLS and then actually going on in the show were the best experiences! It felt like the culmination of so many years of work finally fulfilling on a dream.

What song will always remind you of 2017?

“This Girl Is on Fire”

Compared to this time last year, are you:

happier or sadder? Much much happier. Medication really helps with that - the first 9 months of the year I would have said sadder.

thinner or fatter? Fatter - medication causes weight gain so I’m still figuring out how to handle that.

richer or poorer? Richer! In money, health, and love.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Grantwriting. We finally got our 501c3 for my theater company and I expected that I would immediately have started writing for grants but I haven’t done much of that.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Being depressed. What a hard time that’s been...

How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent Christmas in Florida with my mom, my aunt, my sister, and my mom’s best friend. It was a house of 5 women, and it was fabulous!

Who did you miss?

I miss my dad, as always. I miss my dog Denver, which passed away in 2012.

Did you fall in love in 2017?

I feel like I fall in love with Brandon a little more each day. Also - I reignited my love for bing a paid singer this year. ;)

What was your favorite TV program?

SO MANY! I can’t even choose.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I don’t really hate anyone. There have been several people this year who have (directly or indirectly) hurt my feelings so I have had a hard time communicating with them.

What was the best book you read?

I just started reading again this year - I really liked “Never Let Me Go.”

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Hmmm... after watching the Lady Gaga documentary I have a newfound respect for her. I also found the TV show The Voice, which I love!

What did you want and get?

I wanted paying work as an actor and singer, and I got those. SO AMAZING.

What did you want and not get?

I wanted to finish creating my online coaching program but my focus was split with prepping for the shows (both for my theater company and the musicals I’m doing.)

What was your favorite film of this year?

“Get Out.” I’ve seen it twice now and I really loved it.

What kept you sane?

Punk-colored hair, Netflix, Hulu, the women’s and #MeToo movements, the Slow Carb diet, good snow boots, Duolingo for Italian practice, Brandon Walker, Candice Oden, Sarah Rice in church, Blair Brown with her diet tips, Zach Wobensmith with late night bourbon, my theater company and a few key people who really made a difference this year, and finally my mom.

What did you do on your birthday? How old were you?

This year I turned the 30-35 age range for actors. :) I performed at church, and then did two performances of JACK GOES BOATING with The Seeing Place, and then I enjoyed bourbon and New Orlean's style food for a late night dinner.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

If my mom had been able to travel to NY. If my boyfriend had been able to travel to Italy with me.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?

My personal style has changed since I got short hair, so now I’m a little more romantic/bohemian with a little bit of hipster thrown in.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I think we’re all about Prince Harry right about now.

What political issue stirred you the most?

My gawd. Women’s rights all the way. #MeToo

Who was the best new person you’ve met?

I met a ton of great people this year. David Levy in Italy, Traci Bair and Robert Levinstein in “This One’s For The Girls”, Cait Weisensee and Clinton Powell via my theater company, and every one of my students who I met this year. It’s really been a good year, all things considered.

What valuable life lesson did you learn in 2017?

That I’ve suffered a great deal emotionally/mentally from having cancer, and I deserve to have that treated. Anxiety and depression are no joke, and they have made it a very difficult year. But it is a year where I also triumphed in huge ways.

What song lyrics sum up your year?

“This Girl is on Fire” by Alicia Keys

She's just a girl, and she's on fire
Hotter than a fantasy, longer like a highway
She's living in a world, and it's on fire
Feeling the catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away

Oh, she got both feet on the ground
And she's burning it down
Oh, she got her head in the clouds
And she's not backing down

This girl is on fire
This girl is on fire
She's walking on fire
This girl is on fire

Looks like a girl, but she's a flame
So bright, she can burn your eyes
Better look the other way
You can try but you'll never forget her name
She's on top of the world
Hottest of the hottest girls say

Oh, we got our feet on the ground
And we're burning it down
Oh, got our head in the clouds
And we're not coming down

This girl is on fire
This girl is on fire
She's walking on fire
This girl is on fire

Everybody stands, as she goes by
Cause they can see the flame that's in her eyes
Watch her when she's lighting up the night
Nobody knows that she's a lonely girl
And it's a lonely world
But she gon' let it burn, baby, burn, baby

This girl is on fire
This girl is on fire
She's walking on fire
This girl is on fire
Oh, oh, oh,
She's just a girl and she's on fire

Happy New Year!

GET IN HERE 2018!

Erin :)

The New Me

noreply@blogger.com (Erin Cronican) — Sat, 30 Jul 2016 05:32:00 +0000

As I have talked about in previous blog posts, one of the hardest parts of getting breast cancer is dealing with the physical changes due to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. And there a double whammy with these changes. Not only have they taken a physical and mental toll, but they also wreaked havoc on my career. Because as an actor body image impacts just about everything. It’s not just what you look like, but how you feel in your own skin that makes a difference.

For a few years I put “making money” as an actor on hold as I worked to build up The Seeing Place (my theater company.) But at the beginning of 2015 I made a new commitment to dust off the ol’ headshots & resumes, get back onto the casting websites, and start submitting myself for paying work again. And just as I started to do that, I got my cancer diagnosis and everything stopped. Just stopped. First, it was recovering from surgery. Then, it was being sick during 5 months of chemotherapy. Then, it was having to find the energy to drag myself to radiation treatments every single day for 7 weeks. Once all of this was done in April, one would think that I would be able to start auditioning right away. But the side effects lingered on, and not in ways that I anticipated.

It’s been really upsetting knowing that I had the time to pursue work as an actor but the psycho-emotional/physical impact of the disease and treatment have kept me from putting myself out there. First, I don’t know if I can adequately describe what it’s like to look in the mirror and see someone you don’t know staring back at you. I felt like my identity was ripped from me and I didn’t know who I was anymore. I’d look in the mirror and see an alien - puffed up skin with no eyelashes or eyebrows, short stubby hair, sunken eyes. I hated myself so much that I didn’t take any pictures during this time. I actively avoided the camera unless I was making some kind of funny face - because then at least we could all laugh about what I was doing and we could overlook the way I appeared.

As I’ve mentioned, I lost my hair so it’s taken some time for it to grow to a length that I feel comfortable sharing with the world. I gained about 15 pounds during treatment due to the steroids they had me on to combat chemo side effects. All of the weight that was gained went to my upper body (which is very rare for me but apparently common for steroid weight gain.) Not only did none of my clothes fit, but I hated the way I looked in photos. My face felt fat and my upper body seemed to overwhelm any photo I was in. I was very ashamed of the way I looked, and even though I knew it wasn’t my fault I felt guilty that I couldn’t get my body under control.

It’s taken me about 8 months and I’m just now starting to recognize a “me” that I can relate to and feel comfortable putting out there. I’ve lost almost all of the weight I gained so now I’m working to get to a pre-cancer weight. My scars are starting to heal - they still itch and ache, and I still have tons of swelling that causes pain, but for the most part that can be covered up with clothing. And I’m so relieved to know that my stylist has found a haircut that works for my face and I’m really loving it. I put in a streak of hot pink in my hair as a sort of gift to myself for everything I had gone through. (By the way, one thing that’s weird - sometimes I feel like I have a ponytail and I go to grab it and it’s not there! Is that like a phantom limb? A phantom ponytail??) And in the last few weeks I have started to get some of my old energy back.

So...

It’s time for me to re-introduce myself to the acting community. A new me. And it all starts with new headshots.

I was very nervous for the photo session. I wrote to the photographer that I was anxious about looking heavy in my photos, and I was also questioning my choice to keep the pink in my hair. I just couldn’t bear to remove it, though, and my photographer reassured me that we could do retouching on the photos if I ever took the pink out. So I swallowed all of my fears and last Friday I traveled to the Upper West Side to shoot with Mendez Photography. I had a lot of fun, and though I was a little restrained throughout the process I got some really great shots out of it.

Here are a few from the proofs - they have not been retouched yet so be kind!

Photos by Mendez Photography

I’ve done the task of figuring out exactly the type of work I want to be doing and how I want to promote myself for that work (also known as “branding” in our industry.) So my next step is to update my website and all of the casting websites with my new materials and start putting myself out there. The hope is that I’ll be able to reignite things that way I wanted to before I got sick. And maybe, just maybe, this illness will yield deeper, more expressive work that will bring me an income that will make living in NYC easier and more fulfilling.

---

To see my description of what happened the day I was diagnosed, check out my first post, “Yes, I Have Breast Cancer.” And here is a link to all of my cancer posts.

To experience the art I’ve created through grief, come see me in the play GETTING OUT with The Seeing Place Theater - July 16-August 7, 2016.

---

Erin Cronican is a breast cancer survivor, whose career as a professional actor and career coach has spanned the last 25 years in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has appeared in major feature films and on television, and has toured nationally with plays and musicals. She has worked in the advertising & marketing departments of major corporations, film production companies, theater magazines, and non-profit acting organizations. For more information, please visit www.erincronican.com.